LIBRARY 

OF   THF. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


Received 
Accession  No  .  ^  2_  3   /  (0        Class  No. 


:  ^     , 

QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. — No.  xxix. 


LINCOLN  AND  STANTON 


A   STUDY    OF    THE    WAR    ADMINISTRATION    OF    l86l    AND    l862,   WITH 
•  * 

SPECIAL   CONSIDERATION   OF    SOME    RECENT    STATEMENTS    OF 


GEN.  GEO.   B.   McCLELLAN 


D.  KELLEY,  M.  C. 


NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 

G  .  P  .  PUTNAM'S    SONS 


1885 


WORKS  FOR  CITIZENS  AND  STUDENTS. 


THE  AMERICAN    CITIZEN'S   MANUAL.      By  WORTHINGTON 

C.  FORD. 

Part  I. — Governments  (National,  State,  and  Local),  the  Electorate, 
and  the  Civil  Service.  "  Questions  of  the  Day,"  Volume  IV.  Octavo, 

cloth 75 

Part  II. — The  Functions  of  Government,  considered  with  special 
reference  to  Taxation  and  Expenditure,  the  Regulation  of  Commerce 
and  Industry,  Provision  for  the  Poor  and  Insane,  the  Management 
of  the  Public  Lands,  etc.  "Questions  of  the  day,"  Volume  V. 

Octavo,  cloth 75 

A  work  planned  to  afford  in  compact  form  a  comprehensive  summary  of  the 
nature  of  the  organization  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  National,  State, 
and  Local,  and  of  the  duties,  privileges,  and  the  responsibilities  of  American  citizens. 
"  Mr.  Ford  writes  thoughtfully,  carefully,  impartially,  and  furnishes  one  of  the 
best  imaginable  manuals  that  could  be  prepared  for  circulation  on  either  side  of  the. 
Atlantic."— AT.  y.  World. 

SIX  CENTURIES  OF  WORK  AND  WAGES.     The  History  of 
English  Labor  (1250-1883).     By  JAMES  E.  THOROLD  ROGERS,  M.P. 
Large  octavo     ..........     $4.00 

PRINCIPAL  CONTENTS. — Rural  England,  Social    Life,  Agriculture,  Town   Life, 
The  Distribution  of  Wealth  and  Trade,  Society,  Wages,  Profit,  Discontent,  Combina 
tions,  Insurrection,  The  Development  of  Taxation,  Labor,  and   Wages,  Agriculture 
and   Agricultural   Wages  in  the  Eighteenth   Century,   Wages    in    the  Nines 
Century,  Present  Situation,  etc. 

"  The  author  supports  his  arguments  by  so  many  strong  considerations,  that  he 
is  entitled  to  the  patient  study  of  all  who  are  interested  in«economic  subjects,  and 
especially  of  those  who  feel  that  the  social  problem  is  by  no  means  solved,  in  the 
accepted  Political  Economy,  and  needs  other  and  more  organic  remedies  than  are 
suggested  in  the  orthodox  treatises." — Commercial  Advertiser,  N.  Y. 

ELEMENTS  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By  EMILE  DE  LAVE- 
LEYE,  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  the  University  of  Liege. 
Translated  by  ALFRED  W.  POLLARD,  of  the  University,  of  Oxford. 
Edited  with  an  introduction  and  supplementary  chapter  by  F.  W. 
TAUSSIG,  Instructor  in  Political  Economy.  I2mo,  cloth  .  .  $1.50 

POLITICS.  An  Introduction  to  the  study  of  Comparative  Constitutional 
Law.  By  WILLIAM  W.  CRANE  and  BERNARD  MOSES.  8vo, 

cloth $1.50 

"  The  work  is  an  arsenal  of  facts,  precedents,  incidents,  and  argument,  ana  will 
five  the  student  of  national  affairs  much  basic  instruction.  It  is  altogether  meritori 
ous."—  Commonwealth^  Boston. 

R.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK. 


LINCOLN  AND  STANTON 


A   STUDY    OF   THE   WAR   ADMINISTRATION   OF    lS6l    AND    1862,   WITH 
SPECIAL   CONSIDERATION  OF    SOME   RECENT    STATEMENTS  OF 


GEN.  GEO.  B.  McCLELLAN 


BY 


WM.  D.  KELLEY,  M.  C. 


NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S    SONS 

&fee  fimchfrbochrr  grcss 
I88s 


COPYRIGHT   BY 

WM.  D.  KELLEY 
1885 


Press  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
New  York 


7J 


LINCOLN   AND   STANTON 


PART  I. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  aAj^EcMvin  M.  Stanton  are  dead. 
No  member  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  Cabinet  during  the  Penin 
sular  campaign  is  now  living.  The  Hon.  Benjamin  F. 
Wade  and  Andrew  Johnson,  then  U.  S.  Senators  and 
members  of  the  Joint  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the 
War,  are  voiceless  as  these  their  illustrious  colaborers. 

Emboldened  by  the  ravages   death  has   made   during 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  George  B.  McClellan  avails 
|j|j;iin£elf  of  the  pages  of  the  Century  to  present  his  expla 
nation  of  the  failure  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  while 
er  his  command.     The  initial  article,  which  appeared 
in  the  May  number,  is  an  unjustifiable  assault   upon  the 
lories  of  Lincoln  and  Stanton,  and   but   for  this  fact 
Id  not  deserve  notice,  as  it  can  have  no  historic  value, 
o  the  details  of  the  Peninsular  campaign  it  furnishes 
illegation   of    fact  with  which    the   author's  reports, 
Incriioranda,  and    correspondence    have    not    made    the 
pp)!;ntry  familiar.      The  statements  by  which  he  attempts 
tv     -.akc  good  his  assaults  upon  the  memory  of  the  illus- 
ious  dead  are  sustained  solely  by  his  word,  and  would 
sh  before  a  freshman's   applications  of  the   primary 


2  LINCOLN"  AND   STANTON. 

canons  of  criticism.  He  offers  no  summary  of  results 
achieved  by  the  army  under  his  command,,  and  the  few 
positive  assertions  upon  which  he  ventures  conflict  with 
each  other.  He  speaks  of  beliefs  and  impressions  as  to 
malign  influences  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to 
execute  his  oft  abandoned  intentions,  and  in  this  connec 
tion,  says:  "  The  more  serious  difficulties  of  my  position 
began  with  Mr.  Stanton's  accession  to  the  War  Office 
*  *  The  impatience  of  the  Executive  immediately 
became  extreme,  and  I  can  attribute  it  only  to  the  influence 
of  the  new  Secretary,  who  did  many  things  to  break  up 
the  free  and  confidential  intercourse  that  had  heretofore 
existed  between  the  President  and  myself  *  *  *  The 
positive  order  of  the  President,  probably  issued  under  the 
pressure  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  forced  me  to  undertake 
the  opening  of  the  railroad." 

This  is  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of.  It  serves, 
however,  to  illustrate  the  confusion  into  which  the 
author's  morbid  imagination  led  him  when  in  pursuit  of 
an  evil  genius  upon  whom  to  devolve  the  consequences 
of  his  failures. 

Again,  he  says:  "In  July,  1861,  after  having  secured 
solidly  for  the  Union  that  part  of  West  Virginia  north  of 
the  Kanawha  and  west  of  the  mountains,  I  was  suddenly 
called  to  Washington  on  the  day  succeeding  the  first 
battle  of  Bull  Run." 

From  this  paragraph  readers  will  conclude  that  the 
writer  was  called  to  Washington  to  assume  command  of 
the  armies,  because  he  had  "secured  solidly  for  the 
Union  "  that  portion  of  Western  Virginia  of  which  he 
gives  the  boundaries.  This  was  not  the  case.  The 
forces  under  his  command  in  West  Virginia  had  achieved 
victories  for  which  the  President  and  loyal  people  were 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  3 

grateful  though  they  were  not  of  a  decisive  character,  and 
much  fighting  was  yet  to  be  done  before  the  territory 
referred  to  should  be  secured  to  the  Union.  In  intimat 
ing;  that  his  advancement  was  due  to  so  doubtful  and 

o 

meretricious  a  claim  General  McClellan  does  injustice  to 
himself.  His  summons  to  Washington  was  due  to  influ 
ences  much  more  complimentary  to  him.  His  call  was  a 
tribute  to  his  pre-eminent  skill  as  an  organizer,  and  his 
capacity  as  an  engineer. 

Lieut.-General  Scott  recognized  these  qualities  in  Mc 
Clellan,  and  impressed  his  sense  of  their  value  upon  the 
President  as  reasons  why  he  should  be  brought  to  Wash 
ington  at  a  time  when  immense  bodies  of  fresh  troops 
were  to  be  received,  for  whom  camps  were  to  be  selected, 
and  for  whose  training  and  practice,  as  well  as  a 
measure  of  defence  to  the  city,  fortifications  were  to  be 
located,  planned,  and  constructed.  It  was  in  view  of  this 
combination  of  facts  that  Scott  recommended  the  organi 
zation  of  a  district  to  be  known  as  the  Division  of  the 
Potomac,  which  should  embrace  the  troops  in  and  around 
Washington,  and  that  McClellan  should  be  brought  to 
the  capital  to  organize  and  command  this  new  and  im 
portant  division. 

Though  General  McClellan  knew  that  his  advancement 
had  been  promoted  by  the  Lieutenant-General,  he  entered 
upon  his  new  duties  with  a  studied  course  of  insubordina 
tion.  By  his  contumelious  treatment  of  that  venerable 
soldier  he  had,  by  the  gth  of  August,  a  period  of  less  than 
a  fortnight,  reduced  him  to  a  condition  in  which  the 
preferable  alternative  was  to  ask  the  President  to  allow 
him  to  be  placed  on  the  officers'  retired  list.  The  letter 
in  which  he  made  this  request  bore  date  August  9,  1861. 
As  further  efforts  at  direct  communication  with  his  sub- 


4  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

ordinate  were  incompatible  with  self-respect,  it  was 
addressed  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  and  said  :  "  I  received 
yesterday,  from  Major-General  McClellan,  a  letter  of  that 
date,  to  which  I  design  this  as  my  only  reply."  : 

President  Lincoln  could  not  consent  to  the  retirement 
of  Scott  under  such  circumstances  without  an  effort,  on 
his  part,  to  save  the  old  soldier's  feelings.  The  effort  was, 
however,  not  destined  to  succeed,  for,  while  they  were  yet 
together,  the  General  received  a  fresh  indignity  from  his 
aspiring  subordinate,  and,  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the 
Secretary  on  the  1 2th,  insisting  upon  his  request  to  be 
retired,  he  said  : 

"  On  the  loth  inst.  I  was  kindly  requested,  by  the  Presi 
dent,  to  withdraw  my  letter  to  you  of  the  pth,  in  reply  to 
one  I  had  received  from  Major-General  McClellan  of  the 
day  before  ;  the  President,  at  the  same  time,  showing  me 
a  letter  to  him  from  General  McClellan,  in  which,  at  the 
instance  of  the  President,  he  offered  to  withdraw  the 
original  letter  on  which  I  had  animadverted.  *  *  * 
It  would  be  as  idle  for  me,  as  it  would  be  against  the 
dignity  of  my  years,  to  be  filing  daily  complaints  against 
an  ambitious  junior  who  *  *  has  unquestionably 

very  high  qualifications  for  military  command."2 

The  President  could  not  refuse  to  grant  Scott's  request 
when  thus  repeated  and  enforced.  The  order  of  retire 
ment  was  made,  and  McClellan  found  himself  without  a 
military  superior  other  than  the  President,  whom  the 
Constitution  named  as  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Armies 
and  Navies  of  the  United  States,  and  brief  time  served  to 
show  that  restraints  imposed  or  duties  demanded  by  the 
President  were  as  irksome  and  irritating  to  him  as  had 
been  the  consciousness  of  Scott's  superior  rank. 

1  "Official  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,"  Vol.  XL,  Part  III.,  p.  4. 
2  Ibid,,  pp.  5  and  6. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  5 

He  soon  permitted  himself  to  be  recognized  as  the  head 
of  the  party  of  inaction,  and  to  be  surrounded  by  the 
leaders  of  the  reactionary  political  faction  of  the  North. 
To  avoid  misinterpretation  and  misrepresentation,  I  pause 
to  say  that  I  allude  to  no  Democrat  who  believed,  as 
Jackson  had  done,  that  the  Union  was  a  blessing  worth 
preserving,  when  I  refer  to  the  leaders  of  the  reactionary 
force  of  that  day.  They  were  Northern  pro-slavery  dis- 
unionists  who  preferred  the  destruction  of  the  Union  to 
the  destruction  of  slavery,  of  whom  Clement  L.  Vallan- 
digham  was  a  brilliant  type.  They  sought  the  advan 
tages  of  union  and  organization,  and  established  secret 
orders — such  as  the  "  Knights  of  the  Golden  Circle  "  ;  and 
when  addressing  meetings  of  illiterate  men  in  opposition 
to  the  enforcement  of  the  draft,  to  the  suspension  of  the 
habeas  corpus,  to  the  enlistment  of  colored  troops  in  the 
army,  or  to  any  other  vital  measures,  not  infrequently 
spoke  of  President  Lincoln  as  a  "  Mulatto  Buffoon."  In 
their  familiar  parlance,  those  who  supported  the  adminis 
tration  in  its  efforts  to  save  the  country,  were  character 
ized  as  "  Black  Republican  Disunionists  "  and  "  Nigger 
Lovers,"  and,  if  they  wore  the  national  uniform,  as 
"  Lincoln's  Hirelings." 

But  for  the  instant,  earnest,  and  persistent  co-operation 
of  national  Democrats,  the  government  could  not,  I  be- 
believe,  have  crushed  the  rebellion  and  restored  the 
Union.  Dix  and  Stanton  were  Democrats  who  had 
served  till  the  close  of  Buchanan's  administration  in  his 
Cabinet  ;  Morton,  of  Indiana,  and  Tod  and  Brough,  of 
Ohio,  who  were  distinguished  for  courage  and  energy 
among  the  illustrious  group  of  war  governors,  had  been 
life-long  Democrats,  and  I  might  add  the  names  of  hun 
dreds  of  Democrats  of  State  or  national  reputation  who 


6  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

promptly  sought  service  in  the  Union  army.  But  the 
highest  enthusiasm  for  the  national  cause  was  exhibited 
by  the  rank  and  file  who,  ignoring  party  names  or  distinc 
tions,  with  the  jubilant  shout:  "We  are  coming,  Father 
Abraham,  three  hundred  thousand  more,"  swarmed  into 
the  Union  camps  of  every  State,  and  illustrated  the  popu 
lar  devotion  to  country  and  flag  by  compelling  the 
President  to  accept  the  services  of  tens  of  thousands  of 
men  for  whom  he  had  not  called,  but  whose  services 
\vould  evidently  be  needed.  Yet  the  head-quarters  of  the 
General-in-Chief  soon  became  a  rendezvous  for  the  master 
spirits  of  the  reactionary  force.  Here  frequent  confer 
ences  \vere  held,  in  which  Messrs.  Vallandigham  and 
George  H.  Pendleton,  of  the  House,  and  Senators  Milton 
S.  Latham  and  Henry  M.  Rice  were  conspicuous.  These 
meetings  were  characterized  by  a  prominent  Democrat, 
who  revolted  from  their  objects,  as  a  "  continuing  caucus 
for  the  consideration  of  plans  of  resistance  to  all  measures 
which  proposed  to  strengthen  the  army  or  the  navy  ;  to 
provide  means  for  their  pay,  sustenance,  the  munitions  of 
war,  and  means  of  transportation  ;  and  to  devise  means  of 
embarrassing  the  government  by  constitutional  quibbles 
and  legal  subtleties.1  It  was  here,  so  it  was  then  said, 
that  Vallandigham  was  inspired  to  take  such  a  course  with 
reference  to  the  surrender,  by  the  Administration,  of  Mason 
and  Slidell  as  might  result  in  war  with  Great  Britain.  Here, 
too,  a  preliminary  draft  of  the  resolution  of  Mr.  Pendle 
ton,  which  declared  that  Congress  alone  has  the  power, 
under  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  to  suspend 
the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  was  said  to 
have  been  discussed ;  and  here  assembled  for  consultation 
the  men  who  arranged  the  working  details  of  a  scheme 
1  Moses  F.  Odell,  of  N.  Y. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  7 

which,  having  received  the  sanction  of  McClellan  and  the 
endorsement  of  an  apparent  majority  of  division  command 
ers,  would,  they  believed,  compel  the  President  to  sur 
render  his  well-digested  plan  of  approaching  Richmond, 
and  accept  one  of  the  difficulties  of  which,  as  experience 
proved,  the  General-in-Chief  had  no  conception,  and 
which,  but  for  what  I  cannot  help  regarding  as  a  provi 
dential  interposition,  the  unexpected  appearance  of  Erics 
son's  monitor,  would  have  destroyed  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  and  cost  us  from  fifty  to  eighty  thousand  men 
with  their  supplies  and  munitions  of  war,  including  horses 
for  artillery  and  cavalry. 

Here,  too,  at  the  head-quarters  of  the  General-in-Chief, 
indignities  as  gross,  if  not  more  gross,  than  those  which 
drove  General  Scott  into  retirement,  were  flagrantly  in 
flicted  upon  the  President  of  the  United  States. 

Among  General  Scott's  complaints  was  that  his  subordi 
nate  refused  to  confer  with  him ;  and  when  the  President, 
impelled  by  anxiety  for  the  country,  waived  questions  of 
official  etiquette  and  proceeded  to  head-quarters,  the  an 
nouncement  of  his  presence  was  more  than  once  greeted 
with  boisterous  and  derisive  laughter,  evidently  intended 
for  his  ears ;  and  there  was  one  occasion  when  it  was 
more  than  whispered  by  those  immediately  about  the 
President,  that  he  was  made  to  wait  nearly  an  hour  while 
men  who  denied  the  right  of  the  government  to  maintain 
the  Union  by  force  of  arms  engaged  McClellan's  atten 
tion  ;  and  when  at  his  own  good  time  the  General  con 
cluded  to  see  his  Commander-in-Chief,  his  departing 
guests  visibly  sneered  at  that  officer  as  they  passed  the 
door  of  the  cold  chamber  in  which  he  had  been  so  long 
imprisoned.  That  was,  I  believe,  the  last  time  President 
Lincoln  sought  an  interview  with  McClellan  in  his  head- 


8  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

quarters  at  Washington.  He  did,  however,  visit  him  at 
those  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  in  camp  near  Harri 
son's  Landing,  July  8,  1862,  in  the  season  of  that  army's 
profoundest  humiliation. 

If,  as  General  McClellan  asserts,  it  was  after  Mr.  Stan- 
ton's  accession  to  the  War  Office  that  the  impatience  of 
the  Executive  became  extreme,  history  will  ascribe  the 
impatience  not  to  the  words  or  deeds  of  Edwin  M. 
Stanton,  but  to  those  of  George  B.  McClellan  and  his 
chosen  companions.  The  people  had  been  told  by  the 
General  that  the  military  action  of  the  government  should 
be  "  prompt  and  irresistible,"  that  "  we  should  crush  the 
rebellion  at  one  blow,  and  terminate  the  war  in  one  cam 
paign."  It  is  true  that  his  inspiring  rhetoric  was  addressed 
to  the  Executive,  but  ours  is  a  popular  government,  and 
it  reached  the  people  and  excited  expectations  which  he 
would  not  permit  his  magnificent  army  to  fulfil. 

In  a  memorandum  addressed  to  the  President  on  the 
4th  of  August,  1 86 1,  he  said: 

"  The  object  of  the  present  war  differs  from  those  in  which 
nations  are  usually  engaged  mainly  in  this  :  that  the  purpose 
of  ordinary  war  is  to  conquer  a  peace  and  make  a  treaty  on 
advantageous  terms.  In  this  contest  it  has  become  necessary 
to  crush  a  population  sufficiently  numerous,  intelligent,  and 
warlike  to  constitute  a  nation.  We  have  not  only  to  defeat 
their  armed  and  organized  forces  in  the  field,  but  to  display 
such  an  overwhelming  strength  as  will  convince  all  our  antag 
onists,  especially  those  of  the  governing  aristocratic  classes,  of 
the  utter  impossibility  of  resistance.  *  *  *  The  authority 
of  the  government  must  be  supported  by  overwhelming  physi 
cal  force.  Our  foreign  relations  and  financial  credit  also 
imperatively  demand  that  the  military  action  of  the  govern 
ment  should  be  prompt  and  irresistible."  *  *  * 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  9 

"  The  force  I  have  recommended  is  large  ;  the  expense  is 
great.  It  is  possible  that  a  smaller  force  might  accomplish 
the  object  in  view,  but  I  understand  it  to  be  the  purpose  of 
this  great  nation  to  re-establish  the  power  of  its  government, 
and  restore  peace  to  its  citizens  in  the  shortest  possible  time. 
The  question  to  be  decided  is  simply  this  :  Shall  we  crush  the 
rebellion  at  one  blow,  terminate  the  war  in  one  campaign,  or 
shall  we  leave  it  as  a  legacy  for  our  descendants  ? " 1 

After  nearly  three  months  of  inactivity  during  which 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  troops  was  sinking  under  the  dreary 
monotony  of  camp  life,  the  impatience  of  the  people 
became  so  vociferous  as  to  require  to  be  allayed.  Mc- 
Clellan  could  not  ignore  the  popular  impulse,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  communication  addressed  to  Secretary  Came 
ron  in  the  latter  part  of  October,  said  : 

"  So  much  time  has  passed,  and  the  winter  is  approaching 
so  rapidly,  that  but  two  courses  are  left  to  the  Government, 
viz.  :  either  to  go  into  winter  quarters,  or  to  assume  the  offen 
sive  with  forces  greatly  inferior  in  numbers  to  the  army  I  re 
garded  as  desirable  and  necessary.  *  *  *  The  nation 
feels,  and  I  share  that  feeling,  that  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
holds  the  fate  of  the  country  in  its  hands.  All  the  information 
we  have  from  spies,  prisoners,  etc.,  agrees  in  showing  that  the 
enemy  have  a  force  on  the  Potomac  not  less  than  150,000 
strong,  well-drilled,  and  equipped,  ably  commanded  and 
strongly  intrenched.2  *  *  *  I  have  thus  indicated  in  a 
general  manner  the  objects  to  be  accomplished  and  the  means 
by  which  we  may  gain  our  ends.  A  vigorous  employment  of 
these  means  will,  in  my  opinion,  enable  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  to  assume  successfully  this  season  the  offensive 

1  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,"  Vol.  V.,  Series  I.,  pp.  6  and  8. 

2  Such  stories  were  intrinsically  improbable,  and  the  Confederate  records 
show  incontestably  that  the  enemy  never  had  150,000  men  in  Northern  Vir 
ginia,  and  that  their  army  had  not  at  that  time  been  strongly  intrenched. 


10  LINCOLN'  AND   STAN  TON. 

operations  which,  ever  since  entering  upon  the  command,  it 
has  been  my  anxious  desire  and  diligent  effort  to  prepare  for 
and  prosecute.  The  advance  should  not  be  postponed  beyond 
the  25th  of  November  if  possible  to  avoid  it."  1 

The  impatience  of  the  President  needed  no  other  stim 
ulant  than  General  McClellan  gave  it  by  his  spirited  sug 
gestion  of  the  early  application  of  force  coupled  with  his 
persistent  inaction.  The  summer  and  autumn  months, 
including  December,  were  exceptionally  fine.  They  were 
bright,  dry,  and  of  moderate  temperature.  I  will  not  say 
the  season  was  in  these  respects  without  parallel,  but  I 
can  say  that  for  a  succession  of  months  it  was  peculiarly, 
well  adapted  to  the  organization  of  camps  of  instruction 
and  to  the  movement  of  large  bodies  of  troops  of  all  arms. 
It  was  not  until  the  latter  days  of  the  last  week  of 
December  that  rain  set  in.  Of  one  morning  just  before 
the  Christmas  of  1861,  I  have  recollections  as  distinct  as 
those  of  yesterday.  Hon.  Charles  Sumner  and  I  walked 
from  near  the  Treasury  building  to  the  Capitol,  each 
carrying  a  light  overcoat  upon  his  arm.  Our  topics  of  con 
versation  were  the  inaction  of  McClellan,  the  indulgence 
extended  to  him  by  the  Administration,  and  whether  in 
permitting  such  a  succession  of  months  of  fine  weather  to 
be  wasted  in  inaction  we  were  not  sinning  away  the 
country's  day  of  grace. 

As  yet  Stanton  was  but  a  private  citizen  and  could  not 
have  disturbed  the  harmony  between  the  President  and 
General  McClellan.  Yet  it  was  disturbed,  and  the  country 
rang  with  the  impatient  cry  of  "  On  to  Richmond ! "  and 
the  Executive  and  the  General  were  satirized  anew  each 
morning  by  the  telegraphic  announcement  that  "  all  was 
quiet  on  the  Potomac."  The  rank  and  file  of  the  army 

1  Ibid.t  pp.  9  and  II. 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  I  I 

complained  of  inaction  ;  young  men  who  had  sought 
subordinate  commands  as  openings  to  the  pathway  to  dis 
tinction,  grieved  as  the  bright  weeks  and  months  followed 
each  other,  while  no  portion  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
was  permitted  to  indulge  even  in  armed  reconnoissances  as 
practice  in  something  beside  the  daily  routine  of  camp-life 
for  themselves  and  their  commands. 

Before  Mr.  Stanton  entered  the  Cabinet  the  people 
knew  that  our  troops  had  long  been  held  at  bay  by  the 
"Quaker"  or  wooden  guns  which  lowered  upon  them 
from  the  earthworks  at  Munson's  Hill.  Discussion, 
popular  and  congressional,  excited  their  discontent.  In 
the  course  of  the  debate  on  his  resolution  of  the  5th  of 
December,  1861, — the  object  of  which  was  to  appoint 
a  Senate  Committee  to  inquire  into  the  failures  of  the 
war — Mr.  Chandler  of  Michigan  said  : 

"  One  of  our  number  (Baker  of  Oregon)  has  been  slain,  and 
the  verdict  of  the  army  is  that  nobody  is  to  blame.  One 
thousand  eight  hundred  men  were  sent  across  the  Potomac 
River  with  two  old  scows,  and  overwhelmed  and  cut  to  pieces, 
without  any  means  of  retreat.  I  think  the  Senate  owes  it  to 
itself  to  look  into  the  cause  of  this  disaster."  1 

The  total  negative  vote  on  the  adoption  of  this  resolu 
tion  as  finally  modified  was  cast  by  General  McClellan's 
senatorial  guardians,  Latham  and  Rice,  with  Senator 
Carlisle  of  Virginia. 

Nor  had  the  people  forgotten  that  they  had  been  told 
by  McClellan  that  the  advance  of  his  army  should  not  be 
later  than  November;  yet  the  beautiful  summer  and 
autumn  and  the  summer-like  month  of  December  had 
passed  and  been  succeeded  by  a  winter  of  unprecedented 

1  Congressional  Globe.    Vol.  LVII.,  page  29. 


12  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

rains.  They  had  not  only  believed  that  the  advance 
would  be  made  in  November,  but  had  hoped  that  the 
"  young  general  "  had  named  a  day  unnecessarily  late 
that  he  might  surprise  them  by  an  earlier  movement,  and 
expressed  their  disappointment  in  language  which  might 
well  excite  the  President's  impatience.  The  advance  had 
not  been  made,  nor  had  the  General  carried  into  effect  the 
alternative  he  had  suggested  in  his  communication  to 
Secretary  Cameron,  and  put  the  army  into  winter  quar 
ters.  During  January  and  February  the  rain  was  almost 
incessant  ;  and  letters  which  went  from  camp  to  most  of 
the  post-offices  in  the  Northern  States  describing  the  de 
plorable  condition  of  the  rank  and  file  swelled  the  discon 
tent  of  the  country.  As  spring  approached,  Major-General 
David  B.  Birney,  who  had  recruited  and  was  then  Colonel 
of  the  23d  Pennsylvania  Volunteers,  said  to  me  :  "  The 
inaction  during  the  months  of  fine  weather  did  much  to 
demoralize  the  army,  but  under  this  protracted  deluge  it 
is  being  wasted  by  disease,  death,  and  desertion.  When 
General  McClellan  abandoned  the  idea  of  an  advance  he 
should  have  put  us  into  winter  quarters." 

Meanwhile,  the  General's  congressional  friends  con 
tinued  to  stir  the  impatience  of  the  country  by  their 
efforts  to  embarrass  and  restrain  the  military  authorities. 
On  the  loth  of  December,  Mr.  Pendleton,  as  a  member  of 
the  Judiciary  Committee,  submitted  to  the  House,  on  his 
own  behalf,  a  minority  report,  and  introduced  the  follow 
ing  resolution,  in  support  of  which  he  proceeded  to  make 
an  elaborate  argument.1 

Resolved,  That  the  Congress  alone  has  the  power,  under  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  to  suspend  the  privilege  of 
the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  j  that  the  exercise  of  that  power  by 

1  Congressional  Globe,  Vol.  LVII.,  p.  40. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  13 

any  other  department  of  the  government  is  a  usurpation,  and 
therefore  dangerous  to  the  liberties  of  the  people  ;  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  the  President  to  deliver  Charles  Howard,  William 
H.  Gatchell,  and  John  W.  Davis  to  the  custody  of  the  marshal 
of  the  proper  district,  if  they  are  charged  with  any  offence 
against  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  to  the  end  that  they  may 
be  indicted,  and  "  enjoy  the  right  of  a  speedy  and  public  trial  by 
an  impartial  jury  of  the  State  and  district  wherein  the  crime  " 
is  alleged  to  have  been  committed. 

Having  previously  introduced  a  resolution  deprecating 
the  action  of  the  government  in  the  premises,  Mr.  Val- 
landigham,  on  January  7th,  made  a  rhetorical  protest 
against  the  surrender  of  Mason  and  Slidell  as  an  act  of 
cowardice,  which  would  probably  tempt  England  to  make 
war  upon  us.  He  was  specially  severe  upon  the  Adminis 
tration  for  the  time  and  manner  of  the  surrender.  In 
opening  his  remarks,  he  said  : 

"  I  avail  myself  of  this,  the  earliest  opportunity  yet  presented, 
to  express  my  utter  and  strong  condemnation,  as  one  of  the 
Representatives  of  the  people,  of  the  act  of  the  Administration 
surrendering  Mr.  Mason  and  Mr.  Slidell  to  the  British  Gov 
ernment.  For  six  weeks,  sir,  they  were  held  in  close  custody 
as  'traitors/  in  a  fortress  of  the  United  States,  by  order  of 
the  Secretary  of  State,  and  with  the  approval  and  applause 
of  the  press,  of  the  public  men,  of  the  Navy  Department,  of 
this  House,  and  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  with  a 
full  knowledge  of  the  manner  and  all  the  circumstances  of 
their  capture  ;  and  yet,  in  six  days  after  the  imperious  and 
peremptory  demand  of  Great  Britain,  they  were  abjectly 
surrendered  upon  the  mere  rumor  of  the  approach  of  a  hostile 
fleet  ;  and  thus,  sir,  for  the  first  time  in  our  national  history, 
have  we  strutted  insolently  into  a  quarrel  without  right,  and 
then  basely  crept  out  of  it  without  honor  ;  and  thus,  too,  for 


14  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

the  first  time,  has  the   American  eagle   been  made   to   cower 
before  the  British  lion."  1 

The  question  involved  in  what  is  known  as  the  Trent 
case  was  the  right  of  a  belligerent  to  search  vessels  fly 
ing  a  neutral  flag  on  the  high  seas.  It  was  as  a  protest 
against  the  exercise  of  this  power  that  we  declared  war 
against  England  in  1812;  and,  however  well  meant  was 
the  "  bringing  to"  of  the  Trent  and  the  transfer  to  a 
United  States  war-steamer  of  Mason  and  Slidcll,  it  was 
in  contravention  of  our  own  principles,  and  brought  the 
Administration  into  a  false  position.  In  the  course  of  an 
immediate  reply  to  Mr.  Vallandigham,  Mr.  Kelley,  of 
Pennsylvania,  appreciating  the  circumstances,  said  : 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  see  a  war  with  England.  Nor  do  I  feel 
humiliated  by  the  settlement  of  the  Trent  difficulty.  I  see 
that — in  an  hour  when  our  pride  was  sorely  touched,  when  the 
act  seemed  to  be  one  of  humiliation — we  were  able  to  maintain 
the  position  for  which  our  country  has  contended  for  more 
than  half  a  century,  and  for  the  maintenance  of  which  it  had 
once  involved  itself  in  war.  The  Trent  case  is  settled  on  a 
doctrine  which  has  always  been  the  doctrine  of  the  American 
people.  I  cannot  sympathize  with  those  who  say  :  '  Settle  our 
domestic  difficulties,  and  then  turn  on  England  for  the  insult 
and  outrage  she  put  upon  us.'  Sir,  let  us  settle  our  domestic 
difficulties.  Let  us  do  so  promptly — the  more  humanely  be 
cause  so  promptly  and  vigorously — with  no  reference  to 
foreign  nations,  but  with  an  eye  single  to  what  is  due  to  our 
own  great  country,  its  grand  though  brief  history,  its  grander, 
and,  I  trust,  more  enduring  future.  Let  us  take  care  that, 
from  this  day  henceforward,  the  country  shall  be  ready  to  stand 
by  the  law  as  in  its  hour  of  need  and  wounded  pride  it  settled 
it.  Let  us  see  that,  when  again  the  question  of  neutral  rights 

1  Congressional  Globe,  Vol.  LVII.,  p.  208. 


LINCOLN  AND    STAN  TON.  I  5 

comes  up,  the  United  States  shall  be  ready  with  force  upon  the 
sea  and  heart  upon  the  land  to  meet  the  world  in  arms  in  de 
fence  of  their  cherished  doctrine  thus  sanctified  anew  to  the 
hearts  of  their  people. 

"  War,  sir,  terrible  as  it  is,  has  its  laws.  It  is  also  said  to 
have  its  amenities  ;  and  I  believe  it  has,  though  the  foe  with 
which  we  are  now  engaged  has  found  no  opportunity  to  illustrate 
them.  It  is  said  on  this  floor,  by  the  gentleman  from  Ohio 
(Mr.  Vallandigham),  that  the  settlement  of  the  Trent  case  will 
invite  war  or  insult  from  England.  I  think  that  England 
would,  for  reasons  of  state  policy,  like  very  much  to  engage 
in  war  with  America  at  this  time — not  the  English  people,  but 
the  governing  classes  of  England.  And,  sir,  I  think  our  own 
course  of  action — or,  to  speak  more  precisely,  of  inaction — in 
vites  them  to  declare  war.  I  think  that  the  condition  of  this 
capital  to-day  invites  war  from  any  Power  that  feels  disposed 
to  make  its  own  terms  with  armed  impotence.  Look  at  it,  sir. 
The  city  is  surrounded  with  newly  made  earthworks,  scientifi 
cally  planned  and  well  constructed,  well  manned,  and  well  sup 
plied  with  approved  armaments.  Soldiers  tell  us  that  thirty 
thousand  men  would  hold  this  capital  against  any  force  that 
can  be  brought  against  it.  It  is  environed  within  a  narrow 
circuit  by  two  hundred  thousand  men  in  arms.  And  yet,  sir, 
the  short  river  which  leads  to  this  capital  of  a  great  and  proud 
country,  thus  defended  and  encircled  by  patriot  troops,  is  so 
thoroughly  blockaded  by  rebels  that  the  government,  though 
its  army  has  not  an  adequate  supply  of  forage,  cannot  bring 
upon  it  a  peck  of  oats  to  feed  a  hungry  horse.  Is  not  this  a 
sight  which  jealous  nations  may  behold  with  exultation,  and 
from  which  they  may  deduce  a  want  of  spirit,  courage,  mili 
tary  capacity — call  it  what  you  please  ?  It  is  a  sight  at  which 
men  may  w.ell  wonder,  and  which  the  gods  must  pity  !  We  have 
six  hundred  thousand  men  in  the  field.  We  have  spent,  I  know 
not  how  many  hundred  millions  of  dollars  ;  and  what  have  we 
done  ?  What  one  evidence  of  determined  war  or  military  skill 


1 6  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

have  we  exhibited  to  foreign  nations  or  our  own  people  ?  Why, 
sir,  we  are  carrying  on  war  on  peace  principles.  We  have 
been  engaged  in  it  for  seven  months,  and  if  the  Government 
of  England  will  infer  from  the  conduct  of  this  war  what  our 
treatment  of  her  would  be  in  the  event  of  war,  she  will  con 
clude  that  if  she  were  to  put  her  troops  into  Canada,  the 
American  Government  would  plant  an  army  of  a  quarter  of  a 
million  of  men  on  the  American  shore  of  the  lakes,  whose  sole 
duty  it  should  be  to  prevent  Canadians  from  deserting  the 
English  standard,  and  periling  their  lives  in  the  cause  of  con 
stitutional  republicanism.  Our  army  does  not  seem  to  be 
engaged  in  war.  Our  men,  it  is  true,  are  liable  to  be  murdered 
when  serving  as  pickets.  They  are  liable  to  be  slaughtered,  as 
my  townsmen  were  at  Ball's  Bluff.  They  are  liable  to  en 
counter  masked  batteries,  served  by  concealed  foes.  But  they 
are  not  led  to  where  they  might  hurt  anybody.  Their  busi 
ness  seems  to  be  to  prevent  desertion  from  the  standard  of  the 
enemy,  to  prevent  men  in  the  enemy's  lines  from  quitting  their 
work  at  digging  the  enemy's  trenches,  or  bearing  the  enemy's 
arms,  or  serving  the  enemy  in  any  other  manner  prejudicial  to 

our  cause. 

******* 
u*  *  *  Qur  generais  must  learn  that  these  are  not  the 
piping  times  of  peace,  and  throw  something  of  the  vigor  of 
war  into  their  doings.  England  may  not  respect  international 
law  ;  but  she  does  respect  power.  Let  her  hear  by  the  next 
west  wind  the  booming  of  cannon  and  the  rattle  of  musketry. 
Let  her  hear  the  shouts  of  a  victorious  army.  Nay,  sir,  if  it 
need  be,  let  the  groans  of  the  dying  and  the  wailing  and 
lamentations  of  the  bereaved  go  mingling  with  the  shouts  of 
the  victors,  and  England  and  the  Powers  of  the  continent  will 
pause  with  bated  breath.  Let  the  power  of  our  army  be  put 
forth  in  the  contest  in  which  we  are  now  engaged,  and  we  shall 
have  no  trouble  with  foreign  nations.  But  so  long  as  our  army 
is  used,  .as  it  now  is,  as  a  mere  band  of  armed  police  to  prevent 


LINCOLN-  AND   STAN  TON.  1 7 

the  laborers  of  the  rebels  and  the  disaffected  men  of  their 
country  from  escaping  and  serving  us,  to  secure  the  enemy 
plenty  of  men  to  dig  their  trenches  and  perform  their  labor  ; 
so  long,  I  say,  as  we  employ  six  hundred  thousand  .armed  men 
to  secure  to  the  rebels  the  laborers  to  raise  their  crops  and 
provide  clothes  for  the  next  year,  nations  will  insult  and  deride 
us,  and  we  will  be  in  danger  of  foreign  war."  1 

In  view  of  the  general  feeling  induced  by  the  facts  re 
ferred  to  in  these  remarks,  it  will  not  be  doubted  that  the 
President  felt  his  responsibility  and  partook  of  the  general 
impatience,  and  while  it  will  be  admitted  that  he  might 
well  be  impatient,  it  must  also  be  remembered  that 
Stanton  had  never  been  a  member  of  his  Administration. 
The  season  when  the  rain  must  cease  and  armies  might 
again  move  was  approaching  ;  and  it  was  now,  in  this 
season  of  almost  universal  despondency,  that  the  loyal 
heart  was  thrilled  by  the  announcement  that  the  Presi 
dent,  having  determined  to  put  at  the  head  of  the  War 
Department  a  man  of  convictions,  courage,  and  will,  who 
would  constrain  the  General-in-Chief  to  permit  our  soldiers 
to  fight  or  to  retire  from  their  command,  had  sent  to  the 
Senate  the  nomination  of  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  as  Secretary 
of  War. 

Having  been  promptly  confirmed,  Mr.  Stanton  assumed 
control  of  the  War  Department  on  the  2Oth  of  January, 
and  on  the  2/th  the  President  issued  the  order  for  an  ad 
vance,  which  is  known  as  General  War  Order  Number  One. 

It  directed  :  "That  the  22d  day  of  February,  1862,  be 
the  day  for  a  general  movement  of  the  land  and  naval 
forces  of  the  United  States  against  the  insurgent  forces." 
It  was  followed  on  the  3ist  by  what  is  known  as  Special 
War  Order  Number  One,  ordering  : 

1  Congressional  Globe,  Vol.  LVII.,  pp.  213-14. 


I  3  LINCOLN'  AND   STAN  TON, 

"  That  all  the  disposable  force  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
after  providing  safely  for  the  defence  of  Washington,  be 
formed  into  an  expedition  for  the  immediate  object  of  seizing 
and  occupying  a  point  upon  the  railroad  southwestward  of 
what  is  known  as  Manassas  Junction,  all  details  to  be  in  the 
discretion  of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  and  the  expedition  to 
move  before  or  on  the  22d  of  February  next." 

Of  course  these  orders  evoked  a  protest  from  McClellan 
to  which,  on  the  3d  of  February  the  President  made  the 
following  characteristic  rejoinder: 

"Mv  DEAR  SIR. — You  and  I  have  distinct  and  different 
plans  for  a  movement  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac — yours  to 
be  down  the  Chesapeake,  up  the  Rappahannock  to  Urbana> 
and  across  land  to  the  terminus  of  the  railroad  on  the  York 
River  ;  mine  to  move  directly  to  a  point  on  the  railroads 
southwest  of  Manassas. 

"  If  you  will  give  me  satisfactory  answers  to  the  following 
questions  I  shall  gladly  yield  my  plan  to  yours  : 

"  i  st. — Does  not  your  plan  involve  a  greatly  larger  expendi 
ture  of  time  and  money  than  mine  ? 

"  2d. — Wherein  is  a  victory  more  certain  by  your  plan  than 
mine  ? 

"  3d. — Wherein  is  a  victory  more  valuable  by  your  plan  than 
mine  ? 

«  4th. — In  fact,  would  it  not  be  less  valuable  in  this,  that  it 
would  break  no  great  line  of  the  enemy's  communications, 
while  mine  would  ? 

"  5th. — In  case  of  disaster,  would  not  a  retreat  be  more  dif 
ficult  by  your  plan  than  mine  ? "  1 

To  this  letter  no  direct  reply  was  made,  but  a  memo 
randum  of  even  date,  addressed  to  the  Secretary  of  War, 
may  be  found  on  pages  42-5  Series  I.,  Vol.  V.,  of  the 

1  Pa~e  41,  Vol.  V.,  Series  I.,  "Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion." 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  19 

Records  of  the  Rebellion,  which  it  was  intimated  to  the 
President  might  be  considered  as  the  General's  reply  to 
his  direct  interrogatories. 

He  opened  this  paper  with  an  elaborate  defence  of  his 
military  conduct.  After  which  he  proceeded  to  present 
his  estimate  of  the  plans  suggested  by  the  President  and 
himself.  He  said  that  two  bases  of  operations  seemed  to 
present  themselves  for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  and 
proceeded  to  consider,  first,  the  President's — that  of 
Washington  for  a  base,  which  he  condemned  with  a  large 
exhibition  of  detail  ;  and,  second,  that  of  the  lower  Ches 
apeake  Bay,  which  would  have  Urbana  on  the  Rappa- 
hannock  as  its  base  of  supplies.  This  was  his  supreme 
choice;  but  to  Urbana — should  circumstances  prevent  the 
use  of  that  point — there  was  available  an  alternative  :  Mob 
Jack  Bay.  In  view,  however,  of  the  uncertainties  of  war, 
it  was  admitted  that  both  these  points  might  fail  ;  and  if 
for  any  reason  both  should  have  to  be  abandoned,  and 
the  "  worst  come  to  the  worst,"  he  suggested  as  a  dernier 
ressort  the  use  of  Fortress  Monroe  as  a  base.  For  the 
Washington  base,  with  Manassas  as  the  first  point  to  be 
assailed — which  was  the  President's  plan — he  could  find 
no  commendation  ;  and  his  condemnation  seemed  at 
times  to  be  absolutely  derisive.  To  it  he  preferred  Fort 
Monroe,  saying:  "  So  much  am  I  in  favor  of  the  southern 
line,  that  I  would  prefer  the  move  from  Fortress  Monroe 
as  a  base  *  *  *  to  an  attack  upon  Manassas." 

Thus  we  have  McClellan's  deliberate  official  assurance 
given  to  the  Government  on  the  third  day  of  February, 
less  than  five  weeks  before  the  assembling  of  the  council 
of  division  commanders  to  consider  a  plan  of  which 
Fortress  Monroe  was  the  base,  that  it  was  one  to  be 
resorted  to  only  when  "  the  worst  had  come  to  the  worst." 


ITT 


20  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

It  was  an  evident  object  of  this  memorandum  to  con 
vince  the  President  that  its  author  was  thoroughly  familiar 
with  the  topography  and  geography  of  the  Peninsula. 
Among  his  statements  in  support  of  the  Peninsula  route 
was  that  "  The  roads  in  that  region  are  passable  at  all 
seasons  of  the  year";  that  "  the  country  is  much  more 
favorable  for  offensive  operations  than  that  in  front  of 
Washington,  much  more  level,  more  cleared  land,  the 
woods  less  dense,  the  soil  more  sandy,  and  the  spring  some 
two  or  three  weeks  earlier."  ' 

I  am  able  to  say  that  though  the  President  did  not 
consider  the  argument  of  this  incidental  reply  to  his  direct 
communication  satisfactory  before  rejecting  it,  he  con 
sulted  officers  of  largest  experience  and  highest  repute, 
and  after  hearing  their  views  adhered  to  his  own  plan. 
But  apart  from  general  plans  of  campaign,  and  prelim 
inary  to  the  execution  of  either  of  them,  two  points  de 
manded  prompt  and  successful  action.  They  were  the 
destruction  of  the  rebel  batteries  on  the  Potomac,  and 
the  release  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Harper's  Ferry,  from  the  control  of  the 
enemy. 

The  propriety  of  this  demand  was  so  obvious  that  it 
opened  no  ground  for  cavil.  Washington  was,  and  had  for 
months  been,  a  beleaguered  city,  notwithstanding  the  fact 
which,  with  the  official  records  of  both  armies  now  before 
us,  we  know,  that  with  the  army  under  McClellan,  magnifi 
cent  alike  in  numbers  and  appointments  beyond  parallel 
in  modern  times,  its  commander  had  but  to  exhibit  a 
determined  purpose  to  free  both  river  and  railroad,  and 
the  enemy  must  have  retired  before  the  sound  of  the 
tread  of  his  advancing  legions.  Indeed  it  is  undisputed 

1  Vol.  V.,  p.  44,  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion." 


LINCOLN-  AND   STAN  TON.  21 

history  that  General  Jos.  E.  Johnston,  whose  force  num 
bered  not  one  third  of  McClellan's,  which  it  had  so  long 
held  in  check,  abandoned  Centreville  March  /th-Qth,  in 
pursuance  of  a  conclusion  arrived  at  on  or  about  the  2Oth 
of  February/  because  it  was  known  to  be  inadequate  to 
resist  the  advance  of  the  Union  Army  which  the  Con 
federate  generals  believed  the  impatience  of  the  people 
would  compel  as  soon  as  the  roads  would  admit  of  the 
movement  of  troops.  The  Potomac  batteries  went  with 
Johnston's  retiring  army. 

But  the  release  of  the  railroad  was  another  matter. 
Harper's  Ferry  and  Winchester  were  not  distinctly  cov 
ered  by  any  of  the  general  movements  ordered  by  the 
President.  They  must  therefore  be  specially  dealt  with, 
and  Mr.  Lincoln,  knowing  not  the  powers  with  which  he 
contended,  gave  his  tardy  general  a  new  plea  for  procras 
tination  when  he  made  this  demand  for  a  service  so  simple 
and,  to  so  great  an  army,  so  easy  of  execution. 

Procrastination  was,  however,  but  one  of  the  minor  con 
sequences  of  this  order.  The  delay  consequent  upon  the 
failure  of  a  promised  surprise  humiliated  the  President, 
and  thus  endangered  the  General's  position,  to  save  which 
became  the  pretext  for  the  cabal  to  be  referred  to.2 

1  The  relative  strength  of  the  two  armies  for  the  month  of  February,  1862, 
as  shown  by  the  official  reports,  was  as  follows  : 

Army  of  the  Potomac,  commanded  by  McClellan — present  for  duty,  185- 
420  officers  and  men,  with  534  pieces  of  artillery.  (See  page  732,  Vol.  V.,  Series 
I.,  "  Record,  \Varofthe  Rebellion.")  And  in  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia, 
commanded  by  Johnston,  the  aggregate  present  and  absent  was  84,222,  and 
the  effective  total  present  for  duty  was  47,617,  of  whom  but  2,976  were  in 
the  artillery  service.  The  guns  so  small  a  number  of  men  could  handle 
would  not  have  been  able  to  present  much  resistance  to  McClellan's  534 
pieces  of  field  and  heavy  artillery.  (See  page  1086,  Vol.  V.,  Series  I., 
"  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion.") 

a  See  page  29. 


22  LINCOLN  A!\7D    STAN  TON. 

Though  the  General  now  complains  of  the  "  Govern 
ment's  great  impatience  "  in  regard  to  the  opening  of  the 
road  and  destruction  of  the  batteries,  on  the  receipt  of 
that  order  he  for  once  seemed  to  enter  upon  an  aggressive 
duty  with  earnestness  and  alacrity.  A  great  strategetical 
movement,  so  he  had  confidently  advised  Lincoln  and 
Stanton,  was  to  be  made  for  the  release  of  the  railroad 
and  the  capture  of  Winchester  and  the  rebel  forces  in  the 
vicinity. 

The  enemy,  he  said,  was  to  be  beguiled  by  the  construc 
tion  of  a  light  pontoon  bridge  which  would  not,  as  it 
crossed  a  river  so  liable  to  freshets  and  which  afforded 
such  poor  holding  ground  as  the  Upper  Potomac,  excite 
the  apprehension  of  the  rebels  by  threatening  any  serious 
danger.  His  real  and  effective  plan  involved  a  bridge 
of  canal  boats  so  thoroughly  constructed  that  it  would 
carry  masses  of  troops,  including  artillery  and  supplies. 
Without  letting  any  of  his  friends  know  where  or  when 
the  movement  was  to  occur,  the  President  said  confiden 
tially  that  a  grateful  surprise  was  preparing  for  the  country, 
the  success  of  which  would  restore  McClellan  to  popular 
confidence.  When  on  one  occasion  the  statement  was 
received  with  incredulity,  he  said,  with  a  good-natured 
smile  :  "  But  McClellan  has,  in  this  case,  left  himself  with 
out  a  loop-hole  through  which  to  escape,  for  he  has  said 
to  both  Stanton  and  myself:  'If  this  move  fails,  I  will 
have  nobody  to  blame  but  myself/  ' 

What  is  here  said  about  the  pontoon  bridge  and  the 
character  of  the  river,  must  not  be  understood  as  implying 
that  I  then  knew  the  field  from  which  the  country  was  to 
expect  so  inspiring  an  event  as  a  surprise  of  any  part  of 
the  enemy's  forces.  I  refer  to  the  matter  here  simply  to 
show  how  gladly  the  President  and  Mr.  Stanton  welcomed 


LINCOLN  AND    STAN  TON.  2$ 

any  promise  of  successful  action  on  the  part  of  him  who 
now  ascribes  his  want  of  success  to  their  machinations. 

The  day  came  on  which  the  promised  surprise  was  to  be 
executed.  Scott  had  commended  McClellan  as  an  excep 
tionally  gifted  organizer  and  engineer,  and  he  had  been  for 
weeks  engaged  in  organizing  a  minor  expedition,  which 
was  to  avoid  the  effusion  of  blood  by  surprising  a  relatively 
feeble  force. 

The  width  of  the  canal  and  lift-lock  had  always  been  open 
to  measurement  by  him  and  his  engineer  staff.  Neither 
the  quartermaster  nor  any  other  representative  of  the 
President  or  Secretary  of  War  had  controlled  him  in  the 
selection  of  boats.  Boats  and  all  other  necessary  material 
of  his  own  selection  had,  under  his  supervision,  been  con 
centrated  near  the  lift-lock,  and  the  President  had  been 
advised  that  his  promised  surprise  would  be  executed  on 
the  morning  of  the  2/th,  the  next  day.  I  have  always 
thought  that  McClellan,  in  that  hour  of  enthusiasm,  be 
lieved  that  it  would  be,  for  he  telegraphed  Stanton,  at 
10:20  P.M.  of  the  26th,  saying  :  "  The  bridge  was  splendidly 
thrown  by  Captain  Duane,  assisted  by  Lieutenants  Bab- 
cock,  Reese,  and  Cross  "  ;  that  he  regarded  it  as  "  one  of 
the  most  difficult  operations  of  the  kind  ever  performed  "  ; 
that  "  he  recommended  Captain  Duane  to  be  made  a  major 
by  brevet,  and  Lieutenants  Babcock,  Reese,  and  Cross,  all 
of  the  Corps  of  Engineers,  to  be  brevetted  to  captaincies." 
"  Eight  thousand  five  hundred  infantry,  eighteen  guns, 
and  two  squadrons  of  cavalry  "  had  crossed  it,  he  said, 
and  were  well  posted  on  the  Virginia  side,  and  "  ready  to 
resist  any  attack."  "  It  had,"  he  continued,  "enabled  us 
already  "  to  occupy  Loudoun  and  Bolivar  heights,  as  well 
as  the  Maryland  heights."  "  Burns'  brigade,"  he  said, 
"  will  be  here  in  a  couple  of  hours,  and  will  cross  it  at  day- 


24  LINCOLN  AND    STAN  TON. 

break.  Four  more  squadrons  of  cavalry  and  several  more 
guns  pass  here."  Then  came  the  ominous  announcement 
that  he  had  "  reports  that  G.  W.  Smith,  with  fifteen  thousand 
men,  is  expected  at  Winchester."  But  his  spirits  seem 
not  to  have  been  depressed  by  so  improbable  a  report,  for 
he  added  :  "  We  will  attempt  the  canal-boat  bridge  to 
morrow.  The  spirit  of  the  troops  is  most  excellent.  They 
are  in  the  mood  to  fight  any  thing."  The  tone  and  man 
ner  of  this  dispatch  convinced  the  Administration  that  at 
length  McClellan  had  determined  to  restore  himself  and  it 
to  popular  confidence. 

The  President  knew  that  the  report  that  General  G.  W. 
Smith  and  fifteen  thousand  men  could  be  withdrawn  from 
Centreville  and  Manassas  was  preposterous,  and  did  not 
allow  it  to  mar  his  happiness  ;  nor  could  he  see  any  reason 
why  the  regulars  r.nd  the  forces  of  Hooker  and  Keyes  that 
had  been  ordered  to  strengthen  McClellan,  and  some  of 
whom  were  already  on  the  road,  should  not  continue  their 
march  into  Virginia,  over  the  pontoon  bridge,  should  they 
arrive  before  the  canal-boat  bridge  had  been  completed. 
The  day,  the  2/th,  was  advancing,  why  did  not  the  General 
advise  him  or  the  Department  of  the  progress  of  affairs  ? 
He  was  probably  too  much  absorbed  by  duty  to  permit 
him  to  communicate — at  least  so  thought  Mr.  Lincoln. 
That  he  was  absorbed  was  true.  He  had  assumed  respon 
sibilities  which  involved  many  orders  and  other  communi 
cations.  Though  too  much  engrossed  to  telegraph  for 
advice  or  consent  from,  or  to  disclose  his  purpose  to,  the 
President  or  the  Secretary  of  War,  he  had  found  time  to 
send  three  dispatches  to  General  Marcy,  Chief  of  Staff. 
They  were  as  follows  : 

"  Do  not  send  the  regular  infantry  until  further  orders. 
Give  Hooker  orders  not  to  move  until  further  orders."  1 

1  Page  728,  Vol.  V.,  Series  I.,  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion." 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  2$ 

"  Revoke  Hooker's  authority,  in  accordance  with  Barnard's 
opinion.  Immediately  on  my  return  we  will  take  the  other 
plan,  and  push  on  vigorously."  l 

"  The  difficulties  here  are  so  great  that  the  order  for  Keyes' 
movement  must  be  countermanded  until  the  railway  bridge  is 
finished  or  some  more  permanent  arrangement  made.  It  is 
impossible  to  supply  a  large  force  here.  Please  inform  Garrett 
at  once."  2 

The  General's  order  of  countermand  to  Mr.  Garrett, 
President  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  does  not, 
of  course,  appear  among  the  official  records  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  but  that  it  elicited  the  following  communication 
to  the  Chief  of  Staff  is  shown  on  page  729,  Vol.  V.,  Series 
L,  of  the  "  Records"  : 

"  I  understand  that  the  General  commanding  directs  that  all 
the  arrangements  for  transportation  of  troops  from  Washington 
be  stopped,  and  that  the  movements  will  not  take  place  until 
further  notice.  The  General  commanding  also  telegraphs  to 
send  back  all  the  troops  that  have  started,  which  order  I  have 
communicated  to  Mr.  Smith,  now  at  Relay,  in  charge  of  trans 
portation  at  that  point.  Shall  the  horses  and  artillery  be 
ordered  back  ?  I  have  directed  the  trains  held,  awaiting  your 
instructions  regarding  the  latter." 

The  President,  under  the  inspiration  received  on  the 
preceding  night,  hoped  anxiously  for  further  news.  His 
confidence  in  the  success  of  the  movement  was  unabated  ; 
he  felt  that  the  enemy  had  already  been  surprised,  and 
that — at  least  in  confidential  official  circles — he  might  say 
that  McClellan  had  occupied  important  positions  in  Vir 
ginia,  and  that  troops  enough  to  resist  any  force  that 
could  be  thrown  against  him  were  already  en  route  for 

1  Ibid.  a  Ibid. 


26  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

Harper's  Ferry,  where  a  pontoon  bridge,  that  would  carry 
them  all  in  brigades,  had  already  been  thrown.  But  as 
the  shadows  lengthened  those  who  knew  him  well  could 
not  fail  to  notice  indications  of  unusual  anxiety.  He 
paced  the  floor  of  the  Executive  Chamber  ;  he  was  rest 
less,  and  not  as  he  had  been  through  the  earlier  hours  of 
the  day,  ready  to  greet  visitors  with  a  smile  and  cheering 
word.  It  was  evident  that  his  confidence  was  fading, 
and  that  he  was  under  the  influence  of  misgivings  lest  his 
General  had  again  deluded  him  and  disappointed  the 
country.  A  few  favorable  words  from  McClellan  would 
have  restored  his  wonted  equanimity,  but  they  did  not 
come  ;  but  soon  after  dark  Mr.  Stanton  came  from  the 
War  Department  and  handed  him  a  dispatch  he  had  just 
received  from  the  General.  It  was  dated  Sandy  Hook, 
3:30  P.M.,  and  read  as  follows  : 

"  The  lift-lock  is  too  small  to  permit  the  canal-boats  to  enter 
the  river,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  construct  the  permanent 
bridge  as  I  intended.  I  shall  probably  be  obliged  to  fall  back 
upon  the  safe  and  slow  plan  of  merely  covering  the  reconstruc 
tion  of  the  railroad.  This  will  be  done  at  once,  but  will  be 
tedious.  I  cannot,  as  things  now  are,  be  sure  of  my  supplies 
for  the  force  necessary  to  seize  Winchester,  which  is  probably 
reinforced  from  Manassas.  The  wiser  plan  is  to  rebuild  the 
railroad  bridge  as  rapidly  as  possible,  and  then  act  according 
to  the  state  of  affairs."  1 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  dispatch  contained  no  inti 
mation  that  the  orders  for  the  advance  of  troops  to  sus 
tain  those  who  had  been  posted  in  Virginia  against  the 
alleged  threatened  advance  from  Manassas  had  been 
countermanded. 

1  Tage   728,  Vol.  V.,  Series  I.,  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion." 


LINCOLN-  AND   STAN  TON.  2/ 

Before  leaving  the  Department  Stanton  had  replied  as 
follows  : 

"  If  the  lift-lock  is  not  big  enough,  why  cannot  it  be  made 
big  enough  ?  Please  answer  immediately." 

The  reply  to  which  was  as  follows,  and  bore  date 
10:30  P.M. : 

"  It  can  be  enlarged,  but  entire  masonry  must  be  destroyed 
and  rebuilt,  and  new  gates  made — an  operation  impossible  in 
the  present  stage  of  water,  and  requiring  many  weeks  at  any 
time.  The  railroad  bridge  can  be  rebuilt  many  weeks  before 
this  could  be  done."  1 

This  failure,  and  the  ridiculous  excuse  for  it — that  the 
engineers  had  neglected  to  ascertain  the  width  of  the 
lock  through  which  the  boats  they  were  concentrating 
were  to  pass, — gave  rise  to  a  popular  fear  that  the  sacri 
fices  and  scandals  of  Ball's  Bluff  were  to  be  repeated  on  a 
grander  scale  near  Harper's  Ferry,  and  at  one  o'clock  on 
the  28th  Stanton  telegraphed  : 

"  What  do  you  propose  to  do  with  the  troops  that  have  crossed 
the  Potomac  ?  " 

To  which  McClellan  replied  : 

"  I  propose  to  occupy  Charlestown  and  Bunker  Hill,  so  as 
to  cover  the  rebuilding  of  the  railway,  while  I  throw  over  the 
supplies  necessary  for  an  advance  in  force.  I  have  just  men 
enough  to  accomplish  this.  I  could  not  at  present  supply 
more."  * 

At  9:30  P.M.  of  the  same  day  the  President  received  a 
telegram  in  which  McClellan  asserted  that  he  knew  he 
"  had  acted  wisely,  and  that  the  President  would  cheerfully 

'Page  728,  Vol.  V.,  Series  I.,  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion." 
2  Page  730,  Ibid. 


28  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

agree  with  him  when  he  explained  "  ;  but   the  kernel  of 
the  message  is  found  in  this  passage  : 

"  It  is  impossible  for  many  days  to  more  than  supply  the 
troops  now  here  and  at  Charlestown.  We  could  not  supply 
and  move  to  Winchester  for  many  days,  and  had  I  moved 
more  troops  here  they  would  have  been  at  a  loss  for  food  on 
the  Virginia  side."  1 

Here  was  a  "  change  of  base."  The  difficulty  had  sud 
denly  been  found  to  be  with  the  commissariat,  and  matters 
could  not  be  expedited  because  the  Union  Army,  with  the 
use  of  the  canal  and  railroad,  could  not  be  subsisted  in 
sufficient  force  to  repel  a  possible  enemy,  who,  should  he 
be  found,  could  be  subsisted  by  wagon  trains  hauling  for 
many  miles  over  peculiarly  bad  roads. 

Mr.  Stanton  could,  when  greatly  irritated,  find  relief  in 
the  use  of  forcible  expletives,  but  it  was  not  so  with  the 
great-hearted,  patient,  long-suffering  President,  with  whom 
it  was  my  privilege  to  converse  briefly  on  the  night  of  the 
2/th.  He  was  more  restless  than  I  had  ever  seen  him, 
and  I  think  more  dejected,  though  he  had  not  yet  been 
advised  of  the  countermanding  by  McClellan  of  all  orders 
for  the  forwarding  of  troops.  His  position  was  pitiable. 
He  knew  that  the  army  was  aware  that  Scott  had  recom 
mended  McClellan's  advancement  and  approved  his  ability ; 
that  he  (McClellan)  had  placed  his  confidential  friends  in 
every  important  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac ; 
and  that,  whether  true  or  false,  the  country  had  been 
made  to  believe  that  the  rank  and  file  of  the  army  so  wor 
shipped  their  "  Little  Commander  "  that  to  displace  him 
might  produce  consequences  which  he  was  not  willing  to 
risk ;  yet  this  was  a  measure  he  must  now  contemplate. 
In  conversation  with  trusted  friends  he  said  that  he  was 

1  Ibid. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  29 

now  compelled  to  doubt  whether  McClellan  had  ever  con 
sidered  a  plan  with  a  view  to  its  execution  ;  that  he  did 
not  believe  he  had  ;  and  that  it  was  evident  he  would  not 
execute  movements  directed  by  his  superiors.  Now,  with 
extreme  gravity  and  emphasis,  he  added,  the  time  has 
come  when  such  a  plan  for  a  movement  toward  Richmond 
must  be  adopted  and  be  promptly  executed  by  McClellan 
or  his  successor.  The  next  day  he  requested  an  early 
interview  with  the  General  and,  whether  by  accident  or 
arrangement  I  do  not  know,  Senators  Ben  Wade  and 
Andrew  Johnson  were  present  when  it  was  held.  They 
were  thenceforth  unreserved  in  their  denunciation  of  the 
General  as  "  treacherous  "  or  "  incompetent,"  and  of  the 
puerility  of  his  explanations.  It  was  probably  due  to  the 
unrestrained  expression  of  their  indignation  that  the 
public  so  soon  learned  that  the  President  had  a  practicable 
plan  of  campaign  which  would  be  enforced. 

The  account  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  fiasco  has  brought 
me  to  a  consideration  of  a  part  of  the  secret  history  of 
the  proposal  and  adoption  of  the  Peninsular  plan  with 
Fortress  Monroe  as  a  base. 

This  chapter  of  our  military  history  is  not  found  among 
the  records  to  which  I  have  so  frequently  referred,  yet  my 
statements  will  not  suffer  for  want  of  corroboration. 

I  have  met  Gen.  Henry  M.  Naglee  but  once  ;  it  was 
casually  in  the  office  of  the  late  Hon.  Eli  K.  Price — yet  I 
call  him  as  my  first  witness.  I  had  learned  by  his  own 
report  the  part  he  had  taken  in  the  cabal  the  object  of 
which  was  to  constrain  President  Lincoln  to  abandon  his 
well-considered  plan  and  adopt  one  which  his  judgment 
could  not  approve,  and  had,  on  the  3Oth  of  March,  1862, 
reported  the  facts  to  the  Secretary  of  War.  In  the  course 
of  a  public  address  to  my  fellow-citizens  in  September, 


30  LINCOLN"  AND    STAN  TON. 

1864,  I  referred  to  some  of  General  Naglee  s  statements, 
and  alluded  to  some  of  the  disasters  which  had  resulted 
from  the  success  of  the  cabal.  There  was  no  attempt  at 
a  verbatim  report  of  my  speech  ;  the  most  striking  state 
ments  were  merely  alluded  to  in  the  notices  of  the  meet 
ing.  They,  however,  attracted  the  attention  of  Gen. 
Naglee  and  evoked  an  open  letter  to  me  in  which  he  was 
more  abusive  of  Secretary  Stanton  than  of  myself. 
Knowing  that  the  conversation  between  us  on  the 
occasion  of  our  accidental  meeting  had  been  heard  not 
only  by  Messrs.  E.  K.  Price  and  Henry  C.  Townsend,  but 
by  Jos.  B.  Townsend  and  J.  Sergeant  Price,  Esqrs.,  and 
had  been  carefully  noted,  and  that  such  a  paper  would 
serve,  in  part  at  least,  as  a  reply  to  the  General's  denial 
of  my  statement,  I  addressed  a  note  to  my  friend  Henry 
C.  Townsend,  who  was,  as  he  now  is,  an  honored  member 
of  the  Philadelphia  bar,  requesting  him  to  furnish  me  with 
a  copy  of  the  memorandum  of  the  interview  made  immedi 
ately  after  its  occurrence.  The  reply  bore  equal  date 
with  my  note,  October  10,  1864.  It  is  herewith,  except 
the  purely  formal,  introductory  parts,  submitted  as  an 
essential  preliminary  to  my  recital  of  the  interview  of  the 
3<Dth  of  March,  1862,  with  Secretary  Stanton,  to  which  I 
have  referred. 

"The  time,"  the  paper  proceeds,  "was  immediately 
after  Gen.  McClellan's  retreat  to  the  James  River,  and 
while  his  army,  shattered  in  battle,  wasted  by  disease,  and 
dispirited  by  successive  retreats,  was  resting  at  or  near 
Harrison's  Landing. 

"Congress  had  just  adjourned.  You  were  in  my  office 
talking  on  matters  of  public  interest — the  legislation  of 
Congress,  etc.;  Gen.  Naglee  was  in  the  adjoining  room, 
upon  legal  business  with  E.  K.  Price,  Esq.,  whose  client 


LINCOLN  AND    STAN  TON.  31 

he  was.  When  Mr.  Price  observed  you  or  heard  your 
voice  he  came  forward,  and  after  shaking  hands  with  you 
said:  'Judge  Kelley,  I  wish  you  would  step  into  my 
office  and  meet  Gen.  Naglee — he  is  fresh  from  the  battles 
of  the  Peninsula;  come  in  and  meet  him,  and  let  us  see 
if  you  and  he  cannot  together  throw  some  light  on  the 
darkness  that  is  about  us/  and  returned  to  his  own  room. 
You  turned  to  me  and  said :  '  What  shall  I  do  ?  I  do  not 
desire  to  meet  Gen.  Naglee  ;  I  know  him  only  as  one  of 
Gen.  McClellan's  pets  to  whom  we  owe  the  disasters  of 
the  Peninsula,  and  if  we  get  into  a  discussion  I  may  speak 
my  mind  so  freely  as  to  give  offence.'  To  which  I 
replied:  '  Judge,  this  is  no  time  to  cherish  personal  ani 
mosities — we  have  a  country  to  save — let  us  all  try  to 
work  together  to  that  end.  General  Naglee  is  a  gentle 
man.  You  can  meet  him  and  discuss  matters  as  one 
gentleman  should  with  another.  Mr.  Price  asks  this  as  a 
favor  to  him,  and  I  advise  you  to  go  in.'  'Well,'  replied 
you,  '  if  you  wish  it  and  will  accompany  me  I  will  go  in.' 

"  We,  that  is  you  and  I,  then  entered  Mr.  Price's  office 
together,  and  you  were  introduced  to  the  General  by  Mr. 
Price.  Your  first  remark  was  to  this  effect  :  '  Though 
both  Philadelphians,  I  believe  we  have  never  met  before, 
but  I  have  a  very  pleasant  recollection  of  your  father.  I 
remember  meeting  him  in  the  office  of  the  clerk  of  the 
court  of  which  I  was  a  judge,  when  he  spoke  of  my 
resemblance  to  my  father,  who  had  been  his  friend.'  Mr. 
Price  then  remarked  :  '  Gentlemen,  I  have  invited  this 
interview,  because  you  represent  respectively  the  Congress 
and  the  Army,  in  the  hope  that  you  can  give  us  some  ex 
planation  of  the  disasters  that  have  befallen  our  arms,  and 
some  hopes  of  better  results  in  the  future.'  You  then 
remarked  :  '  Mr.  Price,  you  will  be  good  enough  to  bear 


32  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

in  mind  that  this  interview  is  of  your  seeking.  I  have 
very  clear  and  decided  opinions  upon  the  points  to  which 
you  refer  ;  what  I  shall  tell  you  is  derived  not  from  street 
rumor,  or  hotel  gossip,  but  from  sworn  testimony  taken 
befort  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War,  from 
the  President,  the  Secretary  of  War,  or  from  official  docu 
ments  in  the  Wrar  Department.' 

"'Soon  after  the  President,  in  February,  1862,  deter 
mined  that  General  McClellan  should  make  a  movement 
toward  Richmond  with  his  army,  a  council  of  war,  to  con 
sist  of  the  twelve  generals  of  division,  was  ordered  by  the 
General.  When  it  assembled  there  were  eleven  generals 
of  division  present,  and  a  brigadier  representing  an  absent 
general  of  division,  and  that  brigadier  was  General  Naglee ' 
(to  which  General  N.  bowed  his  head  in  assent).  *  The 
subjects  discussed  were  the  best  routes  to  Richmond,  con 
sistent  with  the  absolute  protection  of  the  capital.  There 
were  but  three  routes  proposed.  The  first  was  from  the 
point  where  the  army  then  lay,  near  Manassas,  directly 
overland — which  was  put  to  a  vote  and  received  four  in 
favor  of  it  and  eight  against  it ;  the  four  in  favor  of  it 
were,  I  think,  Sumner,  McDowell,  Heintzelman,  and 
probably  Barnard,  and  of  course  it  was  lost.  The  next 
route  proposed  was  by  way  of  Fredericksburg,  which  was 
also  discussed  and  put  to  a  vote,  receiving  but  five,  viz., 
the  four  above  named  and  perhaps  McCall,  when  that  also 
fell.  The  third  and  only  remaining  route,  viz.,  by  way  of 
the  Peninsula,  with  Fort  Monroe  as  its  base,  was  then 
brought  up.  General  Naglee  was  its  first  and  principal  ad 
vocate.  It  was  considered,  discussed,  and  finally  adopted  by 
a  vote  of  eight  in  favor  and  four  against  it,  the  four  in  oppo 
sition  being  those  whose  names  I  have  already  mentioned  ' 
(to  which  General  Naglee  again  bowed  his  head  in  assent). 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  33 

"'When  this  determination  was  communicated  to  the 
President  by  General  McClellan,  the  former  made  and  in 
sisted  upon  his  point  about  the  number  of  men  to  be  left 
for  the  protection  of  the  capital,  and  stated  that  he  thought 
at  least  sixty  thousand  necessary  for  this  purpose,  to  which 
General  McClellan  replied  that  he  thought  there  was  no 
occasion  for  any  force  for  that  purpose,  but  if  there  were, 
twenty  thousand  would  be  amply  sufficient ;  and  after  con 
siderable  discussion  of  the  point  it  was  finally  decided  that 
forty  thousand  should  be  retained  for  that  purpose  under 
General  McDowell,  so  that  Washington  should  not  under 
any  circumstances  be  uncovered.  In  the  consideration  of 
this  matter  between  the  President  r.nd  the  Secretary  of 
War,  the  President  said  to  the  Secretary :  "  We  can  do 
nothing  else  than  adopt  this  plan,  and  discard  all  others  ; 
with  eight  out  of  twelve  division  commanders  approving 
it  we  can't  reject  it  and  adopt  another,  without  assuming 
all  the  responsibility  in  case  of  the  failure  of  tJie  one 
zve  adopt."  The  Secretary  said  that  while  agreeing  with 
the  President  in  his  conclusion,  he  dissented  from  his 
arithmetic,  adding  that  the  generals  who  dissented  from 
the  proposed  plan  of  campaign  were  independent  of 
the  influence  of  the  commanding  general,  while  all  the 
rest  owed  their  positions  to  him,  and  were  especially 
under  his  influence,  so  that  instead  of  eight  to  four  there 
was  but  one  against  four.  "  You,"  he  continued,  "  as 
a  lawyer  in  estimating  the  value  of  testimony,  look  not 
only  to  the  words  of  the  witness,  but  to  his  manner  and  all 
the  surrounding  circumstances  of  bias,  interest,  or  influence 
that  may  affect  his  opinions.  Now,  who  are  the  eight 
generals  upon  whose  votes  you  are  going  to  adopt  the 
proposed  plan  of  campaign  ?  All  made  so  since  General 
McClellan  assumed  command,  and  upon  his  recommenda- 


34  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

tion,  influenced  by  his  views,  and  subservient  to  his  wishes, 
while  the  other  four  are  beyond  these  influences,  so  that 
in  fact  you  have  in  this  decision  only  the  operation  of  one 
man's  mind."  The  Secretary  of  War  told  me  the  Presi 
dent  seemed  much  struck  with  this  view  of  the  case,  and 
after  considering  some  time  said  :  "  I  admit  the  full  force 
of  your  objection,  but  what  can  we  do  ?  We  are  civilians 
—we  should  be  justly  held  accountable  for  any  disasters 
if  we  set  up  our  opinions  against  those  of  experienced 
military  men  in  the  practical  management  of  a  campaign— 
we  must  submit  to  the  action  of  a  majority  of  the  council, 
and  the  campaign  will  have  to  go  on  as  decided  upon  by  that 
majority."  The  Secretary  then  asked  the  President  about 
the  force  to  be  left  for  the  protection  of  Washington,  and 
was  assured  that  that  part  of  the  President's  programme 
would  be  firmly  adhered  to,  and  that  General  McDowell 
was  to  remain  with  forty  thousand  men  to  cover  Wash 
ington  under  all  contingencies.  These  facts  I  had  from 
the  Secretary  of  War  himself/ 

"  It  is  proper  to  state  that  during  all  this  long  recital  of 
facts  General  Naglee  was  a  most  attentive  listener,  and  I 
thought  rather  a  surprised  one  at  the  accuracy  of  your 
knowledge  of  the  events  attending  that  historical  council  of 

1  When  early  in  March,  1862,  I  formed  one  of  a  council  of  war  of  twelve 
general  officers  to  whom  this  important  question  was-  submitted,  I  had  no 
other  intimation  of  a  serious  intention  to  make  such  a  movement  than  the 
casual  mention  of  it  to  me  by  Gen.  McClellan,  in  the  latter  part  of 
November.  Not  having  any  reason  to  suppose  that  any  officer  of  the 
council  had  any  more  intimate  knowledge  of  the  intention  than  myself,  and 
knowing  how  much  thought  the  slight  intimation  I  had  received  had  cost 
me,  I  naturally  expected  deliberation  and  discussion.  To  my  great  surprise, 
eight  of  the  twelve  officers  present  voted,  off-hand,  for  the  measure,  without 
discussion  ;  nor  was  any  argument  on  my  part  available  to  obtain  a  recon 
sideration.— "  The  Peninsular  Campaign  and  Its  Antecedents.,"  by  Gen.  J. 
G.  Barnard,  pp.  51,  52. 


f 
LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  35 

war,  and  did  not  once  offer  to  interrupt  your  narrative  or 
correct  your  statements,  but,  on  the  contrary,  repeatedly 
signified  his  assent  by  an  inclination  of  his  head. 

"  You  then  went  on  to  say  :  '  We  all  know  how  the  cam 
paign  opened,  the  splendid  and  complete  preparation  in 
all  respects,  the  immense  force,  the  long  delays  in  embark 
ing  troops,  the  slow  progress,  the  final  disasters,  defeat, 
and  retreat  to  Harrison's  Landing.'  General  Naglee  then 
remarked  :  '  Had  we  received  the  cooperation  of  General 
McDowell's  corps,  as  promised,  we  could  undoubtedly  have 
been  entirely  successful.'  To  which  you  replied  :  '  But, 
sir,  the  campaign,  on  that  route  and  in  that  manner  and 
with  an  army  less  in  force  than  that  to  which  it  was  sub 
sequently  increased  by  the  addition  of  Franklin's  and 
McCall's  divisions  of  McDowell's  corps,  was  undertaken 
by  General  McClellan  with  the  most  positive,  distinct, 
and  expressed  determination  on  the  part  of  the  President 
that  McDowell  should  remain  with  his  corps  for  the  pro 
tection  of  Washington  ;  and  I  can  tell  you,  General  Naglee, 
a  fact  which  you  do  not  probably  know,  I  saw  in  the  hands 
of  the  Secretary  of  War,  and  was  present  when  it  was 
received,  a  dispatch  from  General  McClellan,  in  these 
words  :  "  I  acknowledge  the  arrival  of  General  McCall's 
division,  and  am  fully  prepared  for  the  enemy  in  any 
force  he  can  bring  against  me."  General  Naglee  ex 
pressed  much  surprise  at  this  statement,  and  remarked  : 
*  We  were  always  told  that  General  McDowell  was  to 
come  down  from  Fredericksburg  and  cooperate  with  us  in 
the  capture  of  Richmond.  The  failure  to  do  this  was  the 
chief  cause  of  our  want  of  success.  Another  cause  that 
interfered  seriously  with  our  progress  up  the  Peninsula 
was  the  unprecedented  rains  of  the  season — the  oldest 
inhabitant  of  the  region  frequently  remarked  that  such  a 


36  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

wet  season  had  never  been  known  there.  As  a  conse 
quence  we  found  a  country  that  in  ordinary  times  was 
quite  favorable  for  military  movements  converted  into 
swamps  and  rendered  impassable/  I  then  put  to  General 
Naglee  the  following  question  :  *  Do  you,  with  your 
experience  of  this  summer,  consider  General  McClellan 
equal  to  the  task  of  properly  handling  so  large  an  army 
and  conducting  so  vast  a  campaign  ?  '  To  which  General 
Naglee  replied  :  '  While  he  may  not  be,  I  do  not  know  his 
superior — I  do  not  know  that  we  have  a  general  that  can 
properly  handle  a  hundred  thousand  men  in  the  field/ 
To  which  I  replied  :  '  But,  sir,  we  have  a  government  to 
protect — a  country  to  save,  and  because  one  general  or 
another  fails  we  cannot  settle  down  into  submission,  under 
the  theory  that  the  work  cannot  be  done,  we  must  go  on 
and  try  another  until  we  find  one  that  can  succeed/  and 
then  added  :  l  So  much  for  the  past,  now  what  is  to  be 
done  next  ?  '  To  which  General  Naglee  responded  :  (  We 
have  to  do  what  is  always  mortifying  to  a  military  man, 
admit  that  we  have  made  a  mistake  in  our  line  of  approach 
to  Richmond,  get  the  army  away  from  there  as  rapidly  as 
possible  and  try  another  route,  or  add  large  reinforcements 
to  it,  if  we  move  again  in  the  same  direction/  This  ter 
minated  the  interview,  and  General  Naglee  took  leave  of 
us.  He  spoke  but  little,  and  then  only  in  reply  to  ques 
tions,  but  was  a  respectful  and  apparently  attentive 
listener  to  your  long  and  interesting  narrative.  This  was 
certainly  the  substance,  and  almost,  if  not  quite,  the 
exact  language  of  the  interview  between  you  and  General 
Naglee.  HENRY  C.  TOWNSEND." 

For  a  time  General  Naglee  delighted  in  repeating  the 
facts  recited  in  this  memorandum,  and  in  my  interview  of 
March  3<Dth  with  Mr.  Stanton,  and  in  boasting  of  the  tact 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  37 

with  which  he  and  his  associates  had  constrained  the 
President  to  surrender  his  judgment  on  so  vital  a  matter 
as  the  conduct  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  in  an  active 
campaign,  or  to  assume  a  responsibility  so  overwhelming  as 
to  cause  him  and  his  heroic  Secretary  of  War  to  shrink 
from  its  assumption.  But  by  Sept.,  1864,  the  comments 
of  the  living  or  the  shades  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of 
victims  of  his  cabal  who  had  perished  in  the  swamps  and 
hospitals  of  the  malarious  Peninsula  had  impressed  him 
with  the  wisdom  of  silence  ;  and  in  apparent  forgetfulness 
of  the  interview  we  had  had  in  Mr.  Price's  office,  on  the 
27th  of  September  he  addressed  me  an  open  letter  in 
which  he  assumed  that  I  had  obtained  my  information 
from  Mr.  Stanton,  and  said  :  "  Now,  my  dear  sir,  this  state 
ment  is  simply  false,  and  on  the  part  of  your  friend,  Mr. 
Edwin  M.  Stanton,  maliciously  false."  I  immediately  re 
sponded  in  an  open  letter  in  which,  after  informing  him 
that  he  was  mistaken  in  supposing  I  had  derived  my  in 
formation  from  Mr.  Stanton,  I  named  himself  as  my 
author,  and  endeavored  to  recall  to  his  memory  the 
buoyancy  with  which,  in  his  conversation  with  Messrs. 
Moore  and  Hacker,  both  of  whom  were  then  living,  he 
had  stated  every  fact  to  which  I  had  referred.1  The  con 
clusion  of  my  reply  was  as  followrs  : 

"  But,  sir,  you  have  also  boasted  to  others  of  the  suc 
cess  Messrs.  Latham,  Rice,  and  yourself  had  in  constrain 
ing  the  President  to  retain  General  McClellan  in  command. 
You  know  General  Gilman  Marston,  and,  doubtless, 
remember  the  fact  that  you  and  he  travelled  together 
some  time  later  from  Fortress  Monroe  to  Washington,  he 
being  at  the  time  in  command  of  a  regiment  of  New 
Hampshire  volunteers.  Do  you  not  remember  how  fully 

1  Mr.  Hacker  is  dead,  but  Mr.  Moore  is  an  active  citizen  of  Philadelphia. 


38  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

you  detailed  to  him  all  the  facts  I  have  recited  ?  I  do  not 
doubt  that  you  then  spoke  the  truth  ;  the  collateral  facts 
prove  that  you  did.  But  if  error  there  be,  it  is  you  who 
are  responsible.  General  Marston  is  a  brave  and  truthful 
man.  I  know  him  well,  and  cheerfully  refer  any  of  our 
military  friends  to  him  for  proof  that  you  are  yourself  the 
author  of  the  story  you  wantonly  ascribe  to  the  Secretary 
of  War,  and  denounce  as  maliciously  false." 


MILITARY  OPERATIONS. 


Immediately  after  Mr.  Stanton  entered  upon  the  duties 
of  Secretary  of  War  he  requested  me  to  call  at  his  room 
in  the  Department  every  morning  before  going  to  the 
House  if  I  could  without  neglect  of  committee  business 
or  other  duty.  I  regarded  the  request  as  a  command 
and  presented  myself  daily.  Observation  soon  convinced 
him  that  access  to  the  Department  was  too  easy  and  indis- 

1  Gen.  Marston  is  still  an  active  and  a  justly  distinguished  citizen  of  New 
Hampshire. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  39 

criminate  for  the  times,  and  he  issued  an  order  restricting 
the  hours  in  which  calls  might  be  made  and  regulating  the 
manner  of  admission.  On  the  morning  on  which  this 
order  was  promulgated  he  handed  me  a  card,  the  original 
of  which  I  still  have,  and  of  which  the  cut  on  the  preced 
ing  page  is  a  facsimile. 

Our  relations  were  as  confidential  as  our  intercourse  was 
unrestrained.  On  the  morning  of  Sunday,  the  3Oth  of 
March,  I  went  to  the  War  Department,  presented  my 
card,  and  was  admitted.  In  the  ante-room  I  wrote  on  my 
card  :  "  Will  probably  detain  you  but  a  few  minutes,  but  it 
is  important  that  I  should  see  you."  The  messenger 
quickly  returned,  saying :  "  The  Secretary  will  see  you  in 
a  few  minutes,"  and,  leaning  over  my  shoulder,  whis 
pered  :  u  General  McClellan  is  with  him."  The  General 
soon  took  his  departure,  and  I  entered,  saying :  "  Mr. 
Stanton,  I  may  have  brought  you  a  '  mare's  nest  '  ;  if  so, 
as  you  are  involved  in  the  story,  you  can  soon  terminate 
our  interview  by  letting  me  know  that  I  have  been  de 
ceived."  He  replied  :  "  Well,  put  me  to  the  test  "  ;  and  I 
proceeded  to  make  the  following  statement : 

General  Henry  M.  Naglee,  who  commands  a  brigade  in 
Hooker's  Division,  is  reported  by  gentlemen  well  known 
to  me  and  in  whose  veracity  I  have  perfect  confidence  as 
having  left  the  depot  at  Broad  and  Prime  streets,  Phila 
delphia,  on  the  sleeping  car  for  Washington  at  eleven 
o'clock  last  evening.  My  informants  say  he  entered  the 
car  some  time  before  that  fixed  for  the  departure  of  the 
train,  and  recognizing  old  friends  in  Messrs.  George  H. 
Moore  and  George  W.  Hacker,  seemed  anxious  to  im 
press  them  with  a  sense  of  his  military  and  political 
importance  and  proceeded,  without  suggestion  that  the 
communication  was  of  a  confidential  character,  to  tell 


40  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

them  that  the  President  had  been  so  incensed  by  McClel- 
lan's  failure  to  effect  his  promised  surprise  by  the  use  of 
canal-boats  for  a  bridge  on  the  Upper  Potomac,  that  he 
had  given  him  notice  that  he  would  be  relieved  of  his 
command,  if  he  did  not  within  ten  days  submit  a  practica 
ble  plan  of  campaign  which  he  would  undertake  to  exe 
cute  ;  this  situation  had  been  brought  to  the  attention  of 
Senator  Latham  of  California,  who  had  written  to  him 
(Naglee)  that  something  must  be  done  immediately  by 
McClellan's  friends  or  he  would  lose  his  command,  as 
Lincoln's  patience  would  bear  no  further  strain.  The 
Senator  had  then  named  the  time  and  place  at  which 
they  should  meet  in  Washington  for  conference  ;  but  that, 
on  reaching  Washington,  instead  of  meeting  Latham  he 
found  a  letter  from  him  at  the  designated  place  of  meet 
ing,  which  told  him  that  he  had  been  suddenly  called  to 
New  York  on  Pacific  Mail  business,  but  had,  before  leav 
ing,  arranged  a  meeting  with  Senator  Rice,  with  whom  he 
directed  Naglee  to  confer  as  freely  as  he  would  with  him 
self,  as  Rice  understood  the  delicacy  of  McClellan's  situa 
tion,  and  must  be  treated,  as  he  could  safely  be,  with 
the  utmost  frankness.  The  interview  with  Senator  Rice, 
General  Naglee  said,  had  been  satisfactory,  and  the  plan 
agreed  upon  was  to  prepare  memoranda  as  notes  for  a 
campaign  against  Richmond,  from  Fortress  Monroe  as 
a  base,  on  loose  slips  of  paper  of  different  color,  texture, 
and  ruling,  so  as  to  impress  the  President  with  the  convic 
tion  that  McClellan,  in  spite  of  the  labor  in  which  he  had 
been  involved  by  the  Harper's  Ferry  movement  and  the 
excitement  caused  by  the  President's  imperative  demand 
for  a  plan  under  penalty  of  dismissal,  had  stolen  intervals 
in  which  to  jot  down  a  point  or  two  at  a  time,  and  thus 
outline  a  plan  which  he  was  willing  to  submit  not  only  to 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  41 

the  President  but  to  the  judgment  of  a  council  of  division 
commanders,  of  whom  there  were  twelve. 

As  I  proceeded  to  report  this  part  of  General  Naglee's 
alleged  statement,  Mr.  Stanton  rose  in  evident  excitement 
and  passed  to  a  case  in  which  there  were  a  number  of  blue- 
paper  boxes,  alphabetically  arranged,  and  drawing  from 
one  several  slips  of  paper  such  as  General  Naglee  was  re 
ported  to  have  described,  he  said  :  "  Yes  !  Here  are  the 
slips  ;  these  were  the  implements  by  which  effect  was 
given  to  a  conspiracy  to  deceive  the  President,  and  in  con 
sequence  of  which  80,000  of  our  best  troops  are  afloat  in 
wooden  bottoms  ;  and  should  the  Merrimac  get  among 
the  fleet  of  transports  she  could  sink  them  all  as  easily 
as  she  sunk  the  Congress  and  the  Cumberland." 

I  pause  here  for  a  brief  digression  :  the  following  state 
ment  by  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  of  the  condition  of  things 
he  found  when,  as  a  member  of  McClellan's  Staff,  he  ar 
rived  at  Fortress  Monroe,  illustrates  the  recklessness  of 
the  cabal  and  justifies  the  terrible  apprehensions  that 
filled  Mr.  Stanton's  mind.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
the  Monitor  never  demonstrated  her  power  to  restrain 
the  Merrimac ;  the  battle  between  them  having  been  a 
drawn  one.  Each  disabled  the  other  and  both  retired  for 
repairs.1  "  These,"  says  the  Prince,  "  were  the  circum 
stances  in  which  I  arrived  at  Fortress  Monroe.  Soon  the 
roads  were  filled  with  vessels  coming  from  Alexandria  or 
Annapolis,  and  filled  some  with  soldiers,  some  with  horses, 
cannon,  and  munitions  of  all  kinds.  Sometimes  I  counted 
several  hundred  vessels  at  the  anchorage,  and  among  them 
twenty  or  twenty-five  large  steam  transports  waiting  for 

1  See  "  The  First  Fight  of  Iron-Clads,"  page  738  of  the  Century  for 
March,  1885,  and  "  In  the  Monitor  Turret,"  same  number  of  Century,  page 
754 — for  accounts,  one  by  a  Confederate  and  the  other  by  a  Union  officer, 
who  assisted  in  conducting  this  drawn  battle. 


42  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

their  turn  to  come  up  to  the  quay  and  land  the  fifteen  or 
twenty  thousand  men  whom  they  brought.  The  reader 
may  judge  how  fearful  would  have  been  the  catastrophe 
had  the  Mcrrimac  suddenly  appeared  among  this  swarm 
of  ships,  striking  them  one  after  another,  and  sending  to 
the  botton  these  human  hives  with  all  their  inmates !  The 
Federal  authorities,  both  naval  and  military,  here  under 
went  several  days  of  the  keenest  anxiety.  Every  time 
that  a  smoke  was  seen  above  the  trees  which  concealed 
the  Elizabeth  River,  men's  hearts  beat  fast." 

Continuing  my  report  I  said  to  Mr.  Stanton  that  my 
informants  had  told  me  that  General  Naglee  added  that  a 
good  deal  of  tact  had  to  be  exercised  in  the  preparation 
and  management  of  the  council.  It  would  not  do,  he 
said,  for  McClellan  to  attend,  as  the  plan  was  inconsistent 
with  that  which  he  had  pressed  upon  the  President  as  the 
most  feasible,  and  if  he  were  there  he  would  have  to 
explain  and  defend  details  he  had  not  considered ;  that  it 
would  not  do  to  have  Hooker  there,  as  the  proposed  cam 
paign  was  in  opposition  to  his  known  views  and  he  would 
undoubtedly  oppose  it ;  and  that  McDowell,  who  he  said 
regarded  himself  as  one  of  the  most  thoroughly  educated 
officers  of  the  army,  and  was  fond  of  talking,  must  be 
silenced,  which  could  be  done  by  placing  him  in  the  chair, 
as  might  be  done  in  the  absence  of  McClellan.  He  added 
they  had  been  sure  they  could  count  on  at  least  seven  to 
five  in  the  way  the  thing  would  be  managed,  as  he  had 
prevented  notice  being  sent  to  Hooker,  and  would  repre 
sent  him  on  the  assumed  ground  that  he  was  sick  and  had 
requested  Naglee  to  represent  him  in  the  council. 

Here,  again,  Mr.  Stanton  interrupted  me  by  saying: 
"  The  story  lacks  no  point  of  detail;  let  the  President  put 
what  question  he  might,  Naglee  would  answer  to  the 


LINCOLAT  AND   STANTOX.  43 

exclusion  of  the  generals  who  ranked  him  "  ;  and  at  length 
I  said  to  him  :  "  This  is  a  council  of  division  commanders 
and  you  are  in  command  but  of  a  brigade ;  what  are  you 
doing  here  ?  When,  as  you  have  stated,  he  answered  that 
his  brigade  was  in  Hooker's  division,  and  Hooker  finding 
himself  seriously  indisposed  had  conferred  with  him  and 
requested  him  to  represent  him  in  the  council."  Mr.  Stan- 
ton  then  proceeded  to  relate  what  occurred  in  the  subse 
quent  conference  between  the  President  and  himself,  the 
salient  points  of  which  will  be  found  in  the  memorandum 
of  Mr.  Townsend. 

It  is  proper,  before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject,  that 
I  should  add  what  I  seem  to  have  omitted  from  my  inter 
view  with  General  Naglee :  that  Mr.  Stanton  had  said, 
that  General  Blenker  neutralized  his  vote  by  admitting 
that  he  did  not  understand  the  plan,  but  voted  for  it 
because  it  was  submitted  by  the  commanding  general, 
whom  it  was  his  duty  to  support ;  and  that  General 
Keyes  qualified  his  support  by  the  condition  that  no 
change  of  base  should  be  made  until  the  Potomac  had 
been  cleared  of  rebel  batteries. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  did  General  McCIellan  combine 
with  this  cabal  to  defraud  the  President  of  his  constitu 
tional  rights  as  Commander-in-Chief  and  conservator  of 
the  nation?  On  this  point,  there  seems  to  be  no  room 
to  doubt.  It  was  his  plan  he  requested  the  President  to 
permit  him  to  submit  to  a  council  of  division  command 
ers,  as  to  a  board  of  arbitration  between  them,  by  whose 
judgment  he  was  willing  to  be  bound  ;  he  did  not  intimate 
to  the  President  that  Senator  Latham  and  Senator  Rice 
in  concert  with  General  Naglee  had  made  the  plan  which 
as  yet  he  had  not  had  time  to  consider,  but  claiming  it  as 
his  own  staked  his  future  upon  its  adoption  by  what  his 


44  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

friend  General  Naglee  frequently  described  as  a  packed 
council  of  war.  But  what  settles  this  point  beyond  all 
peradventure  is  the  fact  that,  referring  to  an  interview  with 
the  President  on  pages  140  and  141  of  the  May  number  of 
the  Century,  the  General  says:  "  I  then  explained  the  pur 
pose  and  effect  of  fortifying  Washington,  and  as  I  thought 
removed  his  apprehensions,  but  informed  him  that  the 
division  commanders  were  to  be  at  head-quarters  that 
morning,  and  suggested  that  my  plans  should  be  laid  before 
them,  that  they  might  give  their  opinion  as  to  whether  the 
capital  would  be  in  danger.  I  also  said  that  in  order  to 
leave  them  perfectly  untrammelled  I  would  not  attend  the 
meeting.  Accordingly  they  met  on  the  8th  of  March  and 
approved  my  plans'' 

Again  General  McClellan  is  a  most  accomplished  engi 
neer,  but  it  is  impossible  to  study  the  movements  of  his 
army  in  the  Peninsula  without  discovering  that  its  General 
was  utterly  ignorant  of  the  topography  and  geography 
of  the  country,  with  which  in  his  letter  of  February  3d, 
he  professed  to  be  so  familiar,  and  into  which  he  had 
taken  his  army ;  and  that  he  did  not  know  the  course  of  its 
streams,  the  extent  and  character  of  its  swamps,  or  of  the 
military  obstructions  which  his  persistent  procrastination 
had  permitted  the  enemy  to  construct.  His  once  devoted 
friend,  who  was  Chief  of  Engineers  from  the  organization 
of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  to  the  end  of  the  Peninsular 
campaign,  General  Barnard,  astounded  by  the  discovery 
of  his  ignorance,  exclaimed: 

"  What,  then,  is  our  astonishment  when  we  find  that  he  car 
ried  his  army  into  a  region  of  which  he  was  wholly  ignorant — 
that  the  quasi  information  he  had  about  it  was  all  erroneous — 
that  within  twelve  miles  of  the  outposts  of  troops  under  his 
command  a  powerful  defensive  line  had  been  thrown  up  during 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  45 

the  winter  and  spring,  of  which  he  knew  nothing  whatever, 
though  it  lay  across  his  meditated  line  of  march,  and  altered 
the  whole  character  of  the  problem — that  the  roads  which  he 
had  said  were  '  passable  at  all  seasons  '  were  of  the  most 
horrible  character,  and  the  country  a  wilderness."  : 

But  on  this  question  the  testimony  of  no  witness  but 
McClellan  himself  need  be  invoked,  for  in  his  report  of 
the  campaign 2  he  said  : 

"  As  to  the  force  and  position  of  the  enemy,  the  information 
then  in  our  possession  was  vague  and  untrustworthy.  Much 
of  it  was  obtained  from  the  staff  officers  of  General  Wool,  and 
was  simply  to  the  effect  that  Yorktown  was  surrounded  by  a 
continuous  line  of  earth  works,  with  strong  water  batteries  on 
the  York  River,  and  garrisoned  by  not  less  than  15,000  troops, 
under  command  of  General  J.  B.  Magruder.  Maps,  which 
had  been  prepared  by  the  topographical  engineers  under  Gen 
eral  Wool's  command,  were  furnished  me,  in  which  the  War 
wick  River  was  represented  as  flowing  parallel  to,  but  not 
crossing  the  road  from  Newport  News  to  Williamsburg,  making 
the  so-called  Mulberry  Island  a  real  island  ;  and  we  had  no 
information  as  to  the  true  course  of  the  Warwick  across 
the  Peninsula,  nor  of  the  formidable  line  of  works  which  it 
covered." 

Men  move  with  caution  in  the  dark,  and  to  McClellan's 
profound  ignorance  of  the  country  into  which  his  political 
friends  had  induced  him  to  bring  his  army  is  due  most  of 
the  delays  and  failures  by  which  he  confounded  so  many 
of  his  earlier  military  admirers.  Thus,  for  weeks  Magru- 
der's  army,  which  had  never  included  more  than  11,500 
available  troops,  held  the  vast  Army  of  the  Potomac  before 
Yorktown,  and  drove  its  general  to  resort  to  the  tardy 

1  "  The  Peninsular  Campaign,"  Gen.  J.  G.  Barnard,  p.  18. 
3  Cited  on  pp.  18-19,  Ibid. 


46  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

operation  of  a  siege  and  to  demand  from  Washington  a 
large  supply  of  siege-guns;  to  which  demand  the  Presi 
dent,  enlightened  by  recent  experiences,  replied  May  ist : 

"  Your  call  for  Parrott  guns  from  Washington  alarms  me, 
chiefly  because  it  argues  indefinite  procrastination.  Is  any 
thing  to  be  done  ?  "  1 

But  all  shams  must  come  to  an  end  ;  and  when  Magru- 
der  found  that  his  army  of  11,500  required  but  8,000 
rations  per  day  to  feed  it,  he  felt  that  the  time  had  come 
when  he  could  no  longer  check  McClellan's  entire  force 
by  "  clatter,"  and  must  get  out  of  the  way.  The  evacua 
tion  of  Yorktown  was  arranged,  and  it  was  the  pursuit  of 
its  retreating  forces  that  brought  on  the  battle  of  Wil- 
liamsburg.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  examine  any  of  the 
battles  of  the  Peninsula  in  detail,  but  as  illustrative  of 
many  things  in  McClellan's  management  of  the  Campaign, 
I  submit  the  following  extracts  from  General  Hooker's 
report  of  the  battle  of  Williamsburg  : 

"  Being  in  pursuit  of  a  retreating  army,  I  deemed  it  my  duty 
to  lose  no  time  in  making  the  disposition  of  my  forces  to 
attack,  regardless  of  their  number  and  position,  except  to 
accomplish  the  result  with  the  least  possible  sacrifice  of  life. 
By  so  doing  my  division,  if  it  did  not  capture  the  army  before 
me,  would  at  least  hold  them,  in  order  that  some  others  might. 
Besides,  I  knew  of  the  presence  of  more  than  30,000  troops 
not  two  miles  distant  from  me,  and  that  within  twelve  miles — 
four  hours'  march — was  the  bulk  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 
My  own  position  was  tenable  for  double  that  length  of  time, 
against  three  times  my  number.  *  *  * 

"From  the  earliest  moment  of  the  attack  it  was  an  object  of 
deep  solicitude  to  establish  a  connection  with  the  troops  in  my 
immediate  neighborhood  on  the  Yorktown  road,  and  as  that  had 

1  "  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,"  Vol.  XL,  Series  I.,  Part  III.,  p.  130. 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  47 

been  accomplished,  and  as  I  saw  no  signs  of  their  advance  at 
1 1 120  A.M.,  I  addressed  the  subjoined  note  to  the  assistant  adju 
tant-general,  Third  Corps,  under  the  impression  that  his  chief 
was  still  there.  It  is  as  follows  : 

"  *  I  have  had  a  hard  contest  all  the  morning,  but  do  not  despair 
of  success.  My  men  are  hard  at  work,  but  a  good  deal  ex 
hausted.  It  is  reported  to  me  that  my  communication  with 
you  by  the  Yorktown  road  is  clear  of  the  enemy.  Batteries, 
cavalry,  and  infantry  can  take  post  by  the  side  of  mine  to  whip 
the  enemy.' 

******* 

"  At  this  juncture  word  was  received  from  Col.  Taylor  that 
the  regiments  of  his  command  longest  engaged  were  falling 
short  of  ammunition,  and  when  he  was  informed  that  the  sup 
ply  train  was  not  yet  up,  a  portion  of  his  command  presented 
an  obstinate  front  to  the  advance  of  the  enemy  with  no  other 
cartridges  than  were  gathered  from  the  boxes  of  the  fallen. 

"  Again  the  enemy  were  reenforced  by  the  arrival  of  Long- 
street's  division.  His  troops  had  passed  through  Williamsburg 
on  their  retreat  from  Yorktown,  and  were  recalled  to  strengthen 
the  rebel  forces  before  Williamsburg.  No  sooner  had  they 
joined  than  it  was  known  that  they  were  again  moving  to  drive 
in  our  left.  After  a  violent  and  protracted  struggle  they  were 
again  repulsed  with  great  loss.  Simultaneous  with  this  move 
ment  an  attempt  was  made  to  drive  in  our  front,  and  seize  the 
batteries  by  the  troops  from  Fort  Magruder,  aided  by  ree'n- 
forcements  from  the  redoubts  on  the  left.  The  withdrawal  of 
the  supports  invited  this  attack,  and  it  was  at  this  time  that 
four  of  our  guns  were  captured.  They  could  have  been  saved, 
but  only  at  the  risk  of  losing  the  day.  Whatever  of  dishonor, 
if  any,  is  attached  to  their  loss  belongs  to  the  brigadier-general 
commanding  the  division,  and  not  to  his  chief  of  artillery,  or 
to  the  officers  or  men  serving  with  the  batteries,  for  truer  men 
never  stepped  upon  the  field  of  battle. 


48  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

"  History  will  not  be  believed  when  it  is  told  that  the  noble 
officers  and  men  of  my  division  were  permitted  to  carry  on 
this  unequal  struggle  from  morning  until  night  unaided,  in  the 
presence  of  more  than  30,000  of  their  comrades  with  arms  in 
their  hands  ;  nevertheless  it  is  true.  If  we  failed  to  capture 
the  rebel  army  on  the  plains  of  Williamsburg  it  surely  will  not 
be  ascribed  to  the  want  of  conduct  and  courage  in  my  com 
mand." 

"  In  entering  upon  the  narrative  of  the  operations  of 
the  campaign,"  says  Gen.  Alex.  S.  Webb,  in  his  admirable 
little  volume,  entitled,  "The  Peninsula,"  "  the  two  leading 
facts  to  be  met  and  dealt  with  are: 

"  First. — That  while  General  McClellan  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  vicinity  of  his  objective  point — the  Confed 
erate  capital, — the  results  at  each  stage  of  his  progress 
were  inadequate  and  disappointing. 

"  Second. — That  when  that  point  seemed  to  be  within 
his  grasp,  his  army  suddenly  encountered  reverses,  and 
retreated  from  its  advanced  position  to  the  banks  of  the 
James." 

The  justness  of  General  Webb's  propositions  is  estab 
lished  by  McClellan's  own  commanders,  who,  in  their 
testimony  before  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the 
War,  swore  that  he  might  have  overwhelmed  the  rebel 
force  arrayed  against  him  and  taken  Richmond  five  times 
during  the  Peninsular  Campaign — at  Manassas,  YorktOwn, 
Williamsburg,  Fair  Oaks,  and  Malvern  Hill;  and  the  Con 
federate  General,  D.  H.  Hill  in  his  article  on  the  battle  of 
Games'  Mill,  in  the  June  number  of  the  Century,  says: 
"  During  Lee's  absence  Richmond  was  at  the  mercy  of 
McClellan  ;  but  Magruder  was  there  (at  Yorktown)  to  keep 
up  a  '  clatter,'  as  Swinton  expresses  it.  No  one  was  better 
fitted  for  such  a  work.  When  McClellan  landed  on  the 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  49 

Peninsula,  he  had  118,000  men,  and  Magruder  had  11,500 
men,  to  cover  a  defensive  line  of  fourteen  miles.  * 
The  fortifications  around  Richmond  at  that  time  were  very 
slight.  He  could  have  captured  the  city  with  but  little  loss 
of  life.  The  want  of  supplies  would  have  forced  Lee  to 
attack  him  as  soon  as  possible,  with  all  the  disadvantages 
of  a  precipitated  movement.  But  the  Federal  commander 
seems  to  have  contemplated  nothing  of  the  kind." 

Throughout  the  entire  period  of  his  command,  Mc- 
Clellan  filled  the  public  ear  with  complaints  against  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  his  administration,  and  from  the  time  Mr. 
Stanton  became  Secretary  of  War  with  assertions  of  his 
malign  influence  in  thwarting  his  plans,  and  constraining 
the  President  to  withhold  from  him  adequate  forces,  in 
cluding  sometimes  those  which  had  been  distinctly  prom 
ised.  To  these  charges,  especially  those  which  are  revived 
on  page  142  of  the  Century  for  May,  I  propose  that 
President  Lincoln  shall  reply  from  the  Executive  Cham 
ber  on  the  Qth  of  April,  1862.  The  text  of  this  reply  will 
be  found  in  McClellan's  report,  page  15,  Vol.  XL,  Part  I., 
"  Records  of  the  Rebellion."  But  as  the  marks  by  which 
certain  words  were  emphasized,  and  the  quotation  marks 
which  indicate  that  a  pregnant  question  had  previously 
been  put  to  the  General,  have  been  disregarded  in  copy 
ing  it  for  the  report,  I  have  followed  the  original  manu 
script  : 

"WASHINGTON,  April  9,  1862. 

"  MAJOR  GENERAL  MCCLELLAN  : 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR. — Your  dispatches  complaining  that  you  are 
not  properly  sustained,  while  they  do  not  offend  me,  do  pain 
me  very  much. 

"  Blenker's  division  was  withdrawn  from  you  before  you  left 


50  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

here  ;  and  you  know  the  pressure  under  which  I  did  it,  and, 
as  I  thought,  acquiesced  in  it — certainly  not  without  reluctance. 

"  After  you  left  I  ascertained  that  less  than  twenty  thousand 
unorganized  men,  without  a  single  field  battery,  were  all  you 
designed  to  be  left  for  the  defence  of  Washington  and  Man- 
assas  Junction  ;  and  part  of  this  even  was  to  go  to  General 
Hooker's  old  position.  General  Banks'  corps,  once  designed 
for  Manassas  Junction,  was  diverted  and  tied  up — on  the  line  of 
Winchester  and  Strasburg,  and  could  not  leave  it  without 
again  exposing  the  Upper  Potomac  and  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  Railroad.  This  presented,  or  would  present,  when  Mc 
Dowell  and  Sumner  should  be  gone,  a  great  temptation  to  the 
enemy  to  turn  back  from  the  Rappahannock  and  sack  Wash 
ington.  My  explicit  order  that  Washington  should,  by  the 
judgment  of  all  the  commanders  of  the  Army  Corps,  be  left 
entirely  secure,  had  been  neglected.  It  was  precisely  this  that 
drove  me  to  detain  McDowell. 

"  I  do  not  forget  that  I  was  satisfied  with  your  arrangement 
to  leave  Banks  at  Manassas  Junction  ;  but  when  that  arrange 
ment  was  broken  up,  and  nothing  was  substituted  for  it,  of 
course  I  was  not  satisfied  ;  I  was  constrained  to  substitute 
something  for  it  myself.  And  now  allow  me  to  ask:  'Do 
you  really  think  I  should  permit  the  line  from  Richmond,  via 
Manassas  Junction,  to  this  city  to  be  entirely  open  except 
what  resistance  could  be  presented  by  less  than  twenty  thou 
sand  unorganized  troops  ? '  This  is  a  question  which  the 
country  will  not  allow  me  to  evade. 

"  There  is  a  curious  mystery  about  the  number  of  the  troops 
now  with  you.  When  I  telegraphed  you  on  the  6th,  saying 
you  had  over  a  hundred  thousand  with  you,  I  had  just  ob 
tained  from  the  Secretary  of  War  a  statement,  taken,  as  he 
said,  from  your  own  returns,  making  108,000  then  with  you 
and  en  route  to  you.  You  now  say  you  will  have  but  85,000 
when  all  en  route  to  you  shall  have  reached  you.  How  can 
the  discrepancy  of  23,000  be  accounted  for  ? 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  51 

"  As  to  Gen.  Wool's  command,  I  understand  it  is  doing  for 
you  precisely  what  a  like  number  of  your  own  would  have  to 
do  if  that  command  was  away. 

"  I  suppose  the  whole  force  which  has  gone  forward  for  you  is 
with  you  by  this  time,  and,  if  so,  I  think  it  is  the  precise  time 
for  you  to  strike  a  blow.  By  delay  the  enemy  will  gain  faster 
by  fortifications  and  reinforcements  than  you  can  by  reenforce- 
ments  alone.  And  once  more  let  me  tell  you  it  is  indispensa 
ble  to  you  that  you  strike  a  blow.  /  am  powerless  to  help  this. 
You  will  do  me  the  justice  to  remember  I  always  insisted  that 
going  down  the  Bay  in  search  of  a  field,  instead  of  fighting 
at  or  near  Manassas,  was  only  shifting  and  not  surmounting 
difficulty  ;  that  we  would  find  the  same  enemy  and  the  same 
or  equal  intrenchments  at  either  place.  The  country  will  not 
fail  to  note,  is  now  noting,  that  the  present  hesitation  to  move 
upon  an  intrenched  enemy  is  but  the  story  of  Manassas  re 
peated. 

"  I  beg  to  assure  you  that  I  have  never  written  you  or  spoken 
to  you  in  greater  kindness   of   feeling  than  now,   nor  with  a 
fuller  purpose  to  sustain  you,  so  far  as,  in  my  most  anxious 
judgment,  I  consistently  can.     But  you  must  act. 
"  Yours  very  truly, 

"  A.  LINCOLN." 

Though  this  letter  does  not  name  Mr.  Stanton,  it  is  his 
thorough  vindication,  and  illustrates  to  the  generation 
which  has  come  to  maturity  since  the  great  President's 
death,  the  gentleness  of  his  nature,  by  showing  how,  when 
stirred,  by  persistent  misrepresentation,  to  what  General 
McClellan  still  regards  as  extreme  impatience,  he  could 
reason  with  a  pampered  and  petulant  egotist. 


PART  II. 

THE  purpose  with  which  I  finished  reading  Gen.  McClel- 
lan's  paper  was  to  prepare  within  the  limits  of  a  magazine 
article  a  defence  of  my  silent  friends.  Having  found  it 
impossible  to  compress  my  materials  into  such  limited 
space,  I  submit  this  brochure  in  vindication  of  the  truth  of 
history,  and  in  justice  to  the  illustrious  dead,  whose  mem 
ory  the  writer  of  that  article  has  so  wantonly  aspersed. 

I  do  not  propose  to  follow  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
through  the  disasters  which  incompetence  or  covert  design 
inflicted  upon  it,  in  slow  succession,  from  Fortress  Monroe 
and  Yorktown  to  Harrison's  Landing,  but  I  cannot  resist 
the  temptation  to  borrow  a  summary  of  the  results  of  its 
patriotic  toil  and  suffering,  from  the  pages  of  the  latest, 
and,  in  my  judgment,  the  best  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
that  has  yet  appeared.  The  author  of  this  admirable 
volume,  Hon.  Isaac  N.  Arnold,  says  :  1 

"  On  the  8th  of  July,  1862,  the  President  visited  the  camp 
of  General  McClellan,  and  was  depressed  on  finding  that  of 
the  magnificent  army  with  which  that  general  had  started  to 
capture  Richmond,  and  with  all  the  reinforcements  which  had 
been  sent  to  it,  there  were  now  remaining  only  85,000  effective 
men.  There  is  a  touching-  story  in  Roman  history,  of  the 
Emperor  Augustus  calling  in  vain  upon  Varus  to  give  him 
back  his  legions.  The  President  might  well  have  said  to 
McClellan  at  Harrison's  Landing  :  '  Where  are  my  soldiers? — 

1  Page  287. 

52 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  53 

where  are  the  patriotic  young  volunteers,  vainly  sacrificed  in 
fruitless  battles  from  Yorktown  to  Malvern  Hill,  and  the  still 
larger  numbers  who  have  perished  in  hospitals  and  in  the 
swamps  of  the  Chickahominy  ? '  *  What  has  been  gained  by 
this  costly  sacrifice  ? ' 

"  The  records  of  the  Confederates  make  it  perfectly  clear 
that  there  were  several  occasions  when  the  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac  could  have  broken  through  their  thin  lines  and  gone 
into  Richmond,  but  McClellan  had  not  the  sagacity  to  discover 
it,  and  if  he  had  known  of  their  weakness,  he  would  probably 
have  hesitated  until  it  was  too  late." 

What  a  contrast  to  the  enervating  inaction  and  fruitless 
expenditure  of  money  and  men  summed  up  in  this  para 
graph,  do  Grant's  military  movements  present  !  Indeed, 
McClellan's  incompetency,  or  want  of  fidelity  to  the 
cause,  to  the  command  of  whose  armies  President  Lin 
coln  had  assigned  him,  is  absolutely  demonstrated  by  a 
study  of  Grant's  army  record.1  McClellan  was  as  a  Major- 

1  June  28,  1861. — Mustered  into  U.  S.  Service  as  Colonel  2ist  Illinois 
Infantry. 

August  8,  1861. — -Assigned  to  command  of  the  "  District  of  Ironton,"  Mo. 

August  9,  1861. — Appointed  Brig.-Gen.  U.  S.  Vols.,  to  date  from  May 
17,  1861. 

August  28,  1861. — Assigned  to  command  of  all  troops  in  Southern 
Missouri  ;  this  command  was  extended  over  Southern  Illinois  and  Western 
Kentucky,  and  was  exercised  by  Grant  till  he  took  the  field  in  Feb.,  1862. 

Sept.  6.,  1861. — Occupied  Paducah,  Ky. 

Nov.  7,  1861. — Commanded  U.  S.  forces  in  the  battle  of  Belmont,  Mo. 

Feb.  6,  1862. — Commanded  land  forces  at  capture  of  Fort  Henry,  Tenn. 

Feb.  14,  1862. — Assigned  to  command  of  District  of  West  Tennessee. 

Feb.  16,  1862. — Captures  Fort  Donelson,  Tennessee.  Appointed  Major- 
General  U.  S.  Vols. 

Feb.  17  to  Oct.  25,  1862. — Commanding  District  of  West  Tennessee. 

March  4  to  April  13,  1862. — Commanding  expedition  up  the  Tennessee 
River. 

April  6  and  7,  1862. — Commanding  United  States  forces  at  the  battle  of 
Pittsburg  Landing. 


54  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

General  in  command  of  the  Union  forces  in  West  Vir 
ginia  when  Grant  was  employed  as  a  citizen  clerk  in  the 
office  of  the  Adjutant-General  of  the  State  of  Illinois, 
from  which  humble  position  he  was  promoted  by  Gover 
nor  Yates  to  the  colonelcy  of  the  2ist  Regiment  of  State 
Volunteers.  Three  weeks  thereafter,  on  June  28th,  he 
was  mustered  into  the  United  States  Service,  and  thence 
forth  manifested  a  desire  to  strike  the  enemy  whenever  it 
could  be  done.  His  advancement  was  rapid  beyond  prece 
dent,  but  he  won  it  fairly,  step  by  step,  by  availing  him 
self  of  possibilities  which  had  been  presented  to  McClellan, 
but  which  neither  the  voice  of  military  ambition,  promis 
ing  present  plaudits  and  future  fame,  nor  the  persuasive 
powers  of  Lincoln  and  Stanton  could  induce  the  immedi 
ate  successor  of  Winfield  Scott  in  the  coveted  position 
of  General-in-Chief,  to  successfully  test. 

The  delays  and  disasters  to  which   this   splendid  and 

April  13  to  June  10,  1862. — Second  in  command  to  Major-General  Hal- 
leek,  commanding  Department  of  the  Mississippi. 

July  1 6,  1862. — Succeeded  General  Halleck  in  command  of  forces  about 
and  west  of  Corinth. 

Oct.  16,  1862. — Assigned  to  command  of  the  I3th  Army  Corps  and  Depart 
ment  of  the  Tennessee. 

Oct.  25,  1862,  to  Oct.  16,  1863. — Commanding  Department  of  Tennessee. 

Oct.  31,  1862,  to  Jan.  10,  1863. — In  immediate  command  of  operations 
along  the  Mississippi  Central  Railroad. 

Jan.  30  to  July  4,  1863. — In  immediate  command  of  operations  against 
Vicksburg. 

July  4,  1863. — Appointed  Major-General  U.  S.  Army. 

Oct.  16,  1863. — Assigned  to  command  of  the  Military  Division  of  the 
Mississippi,  embracing  the  Departments  of  the  Cumberland,  Ohio,  and 
Tennessee. 

Oct.  18,  1863,  to  March  17,  1864. — Commanding  Military  Division  of  the 
Mississippi. 

Nov.  23  to  27,  1863. — Defeats  Confederate  Army  of  Tennessee  at  Mis 
sionary  Ridge  and  Lookout  Mountain,  pursuing  it  to  Ringgold. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  55 

thoroughly  appointed  army  had  been  so  long  subjected, 
had  had  the  effect  of  impairing  the  confidence  of  many 
of  its  officers  in  each  other,  and  in  many  instances  of 
begetting  mutual  bitterness  of  feeling.  In  the  West  hap 
pier  conditions  prevailed.  There  success  had  inspired 
both  officers  and  men  with  confidence  in  themselves  and 
each  other,  and  had  turned  the  thoughts  of  the  country 
toward  that  section  of  the  Union  as  the  field  from  which 
a  successful  commander  of  our  Eastern  forces  must  be 
sought.  It  was  therefore  natural  that  when  the  President 
had  been  convinced  that  nothing  could  be  hoped  for  from 
McClellan's  leadership  he  should  commit  the  com 
mand  of  the  army  to  a  Western  man,  in  whom  the 
country  might  hope  if  not  confide.  Accordingly  Halleck 
was  appointed  General-in-Chief,  and  assumed  command  on 
the  nth  of  July.  About  the  same  time  the  President, 
by  an  Executive  order,  created  the  Army  of  Virginia, 

Nov.  25,  1863. — Dispatches  Granger,  and  afterward  Sherman,  to  the  suc 
cor  of  Knoxville,  Tenn. 

March  2,  1864. — Appointed  Lieutenant-General  of  U.  S.  Army. 

March  17,  1864. — Assumes  command  of  the  Armies  of  the  United  States. 

May  4,  1864. — Takes  the  field  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  and  gth 
Army  Corps. 

May  4  to  June  14,  1864. — Engaged  in  the  campaign  from  the  Rapidan  to 
the  James  as  follows  : 

May  5-7. — Wilderness. 

May  8-iS. — Spottsylvania.  , 

May  25-27. — North  Anna. 

June  1-12  — Cold  Harbor. 

June  14-15. — Crosses  James  River. 

April  15,  1864,  to  April  2,  1865. — Operations  against  Petersburg. 

March  29  to  April  9,  1865. — Final  campaign  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 

April  2,  1865. — Captures  Petersburg. 

April  3,  1865. — Occupation  of  Richmond. 

April  9,  1865. — Surrender  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia. 

July  25,  1865. — Appointed  General  of  the  Armies  of  the  United  States. 
The  first  one  so  appointed  under  our  Constitution. 

•'•  )X 


56  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

which  he  assigned  to  the  command  of  General  John  Pope, 
whose  success  at  Island  No.  10,  and  at  New  Madrid,  on 
the  Mississippi,  had  illustrated  his  tact  and  gallantry. 
But  events  soon  showed  that  Pope's  discretion  was  not 
equal  to  his  courage,  for,  on  assuming  command  of  the 
three  corps- — those  of  Fremont,  Banks,  and  McDowell— 
which  constituted  his  force,  and  gave  him  about  38,000 
men  with  whom  to  defend  Washington,  hold  the  valley 
of  the  Shenandoah,  and  repel  the  expected  approach  of 
Lee,  he  issued  an  address  to  his  army  which  was  calcu 
lated  to  wound  McClellan's  susceptibilities,  but  which 
cannot  be  accepted  as  a  plea  in  extenuation  of  the  course 
pursued  toward  him  and  his  gallant  command  by  McClel- 
lan  and  Friz-John  Porter. 

It  had  become  known  through  an  intercepted  dispatch 
from  Lee  to  Stuart  as  early  as  the  i6th  of  July,  that  Lee 
was  preparing  to  mass  an  overwhelming  army  in  front  of 
Pope  and  crush  him  before  he  could  be  reenforced  by  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac.  Thus  advised  of  his  danger,  Pope 
retired  behind  the  Rappahannock.  Two  patriotic  move 
ments  were  now  open  to  McClellan  :  To  move  on  Rich 
mond  and  force  Lee  back  to  its  defence,  for  which 
operation  he  still  had  ample  resources ;  or  by  prompt 
movements  to  reenforce  Pope,  and  by  their  combined 
forces  overwhelm  Lee  while  en  route  to  Maryland.  Un 
happily  for  his  fame,  he  did  neither.  The  object  of  this 
paper  does  not  require  me  to  discuss  their  motives,  or  the 
conduct  of  McClellan  and  his  most  trusted  chieftains 
towards  Gen.  Pope  and  his  command.  The  story  consti 
tutes  one  of  the  most  painful  and  ignoble  chapters  of  our 
history.  As  an  exhibition  of  military  insubordination  and 
persistent  disobedience,  within  the  sound  of  an  enemy's 
guns,  it  is  unparalleled  in  modern  history.  The  facts  are 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  57 

proven  by  official  papers,  and  may  be  read  in  orders  of  the 
President,  the  Secretary  of  War,  and  the  General-in-Chief, 
which  may  be  found  at  length  in  the  report  of  the  Com 
mittee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War,  in  the  Official  Records, 
of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion,  and  admirably  collated  and 
condensed  in  the  biographies  of  Lincoln  by  Raymond  and 
Arnold,  to  which  I  have  referred.  It  is  enough  for  me  to 
say  here  that,  in  consequence  of  the  disregard  of  orders 
by  McClellan  and  his  chiefs,  Pope's  army,  after  three  days 
of  desperate  fighting,  was  broken  and  driven  within  the 
defences  of  Washington.  Such  was  the  inglorious  termi 
nation  of  the  Peninsular  Campaign,  with  Fortress  Monroe 
as  a  base,  during  which  Gen.  McClellan,  "  from  first  to 
last,  never  made  his  personal  presence  felt  on  a  battle 
field."  ' 

Here  I  would  pause,  but  that  my  arraignment  would  lack 
completeness  if  I  failed  to  consider  two  questions  which 
incredulity  sometimes  propounds. 

First. — What  motive  could  have  impelled  McClellan  to 
forego  the  fame  of  a  successful  general  and  the  grandest 
object  of  a  noble  ambition — the  restoration  of  peace  and 
the  preservation  of  the  unity  of  his  country,  when  torn 
and  distracted  by  fratricidal  war? 

Second. — If  he  were  contumacious,  faithless,  or  incom 
petent,  why  did  Mr.  Lincoln  continue  him  in  command 
and  restore  him  thereto  after  Gen.  Pope's  betrayal  ? 

While  considering  the  first  question,  I  must  remind  my 
readers  that  I  told  them  that,  having  driven  the  venerable 
Lieutenant-General  into  retirement,  McClellan  had  placed 
himself  at  the  head  of  the  party  of  inaction,  and  permit 
ted  himself  to  be  surrounded  by  the  leaders  of  the  reac 
tionary  political  forces  of  the  Northern  States.  I  did  not 

1  Gen.  Palfrey's  "  Antietam  and  Fredericksburg,"  p.  134. 


58  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

add,  as  I  might  have  done,  and  now  do,  that  he  was 
thenceforth  recognized  as  the  accepted  candidate  of  those 
forces  for  the  Presidential  election  which  would  occur  in 
the  autumn  of  1864. 

For  evidence  of  his  intense  solicitude  for  the  preserva 
tion  of  the  rights  of  property  of  the  citizens  of  the 
insurgent  States,  and  that  he  regarded  it  as  a  measure  of 
higher  importance  than  the  success  of  our  arms,  I  may 
refer  at  large  to  his  orders,  proclamations,  memoranda, 
letters,  and  dispatches,  whether  addressed  to  national  or 
State  officers,  or  to  individuals,  or  bodies  of  citizens.  He 
availed  himself  of  every  pretext  for  expressing  his  convic 
tion  that  no  act  of  the  Government  or  army  should  impair 
the  value  or  the  sacredness  of  slave  property.  And  his 
assumption  that  his  army  was  an  armed  police,  for  the  pro 
tection  of  slavery,  with  his  persistent  refusal  to  permit  it 
to  achieve  a  decisive  victory,  justified  the  country  in  accept 
ing  the  declaration  of  his  purpose,  made  by  his  friend  and 
subordinate,  Major  John  J.  Key,  who,  in  reply  to  the 
question :  "  Why  was  not  the  rebel  army  bagged  im 
mediately  after  the  battle  of  Sharpsburg?"  said  that  "  It 
was  not  the  game  ;  that  we  should  tire  the  rebels  out, 
and  ourselves  ;  that  that  was  the  only  way  the  Union 
could  be  preserved,  we  come  together  fraternally,  and 
slavery  be  saved."  l 

Strongly  confirmatory  of  Major  Key's  exposition  of 
"the  game"  to  be  played  by  McClellan,  is  the  general's 
letter  to  the  President,  from  the  gun-boat  on  which  he 
had  sought  safety  at  Harrison's  Landing,  after  the  dis 
asters  of  Malvern  Hill.  It  opens  with  a  frank  confession 
that  the  condition  of  the  army  was  critical,  and  proceeds 
to  treat  of  subjects  which,  he  as  frankly  admits,  "  do  not 
1  Moore's  "  Rebellion  Record,"  vol.  5,  p.  87. 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  59 

strictly  relate  to  the  situation  of  this  army  or  strictly  come 
within  the  scope  of  my  official  duties."  Having,  as  he 
supposed,  by  exaggerated  appeals  to  the  apprehensions 
of  the  President,  prepared  the  way  for  bravado,  the  soldier 
who  professed  to  believe  that  there  was  then  an  over 
whelming  army  in  his  front,  which  could  drive  him  from 
his  positions,  or  reduce  him  to  submission  by  blocking 
his  river  communications,  insolently  attempted  to  play 
the  dictator  and  announced,  to  his  Commander-in-Chief, 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  that  an  Executive 
declaration  of  views  especially  upon  slavery,  which,  he 
could  not  approve,  would  rapidly  disintegrate  the  army 
under  his  command.  But  on  these  delicate  points,  the 
General  must  be  allowed  to  speak  for  himself.  He  says : 

"  HEAD-QUARTERS  ARMY  OF  THE  POTOMAC,       ) 
"Camp  near  Harrison's  Landing,  Va.,  July  7,  1862.  j 

"  MR.  PRESIDENT  : — You  have  been  fully  informed,  that  the 
rebel  army  is  in  the  front,  with  the  purpose  of  overwhelming 
us  by  attacking  our  positions  or  reducing  us  by  blocking  our 
river  communications.  I  cannot  but  regard  our  condition  as 
critical,  and  I  earnestly  desire,  in  view  of  possible  contingen 
cies,  to  lay  before  your  Excellency,  for  your  private  considera 
tion,  my  general  views  concerning  the  existing  state  of  the 
rebellion,  although  they  do  not  strictly  relate  to  the  situation 
of  this  army,  or  strictly  come  within  the  scope  of  my  official 

duties. 

******* 

"  Neither  confiscation  of  property,  political  execution  of 
persons,  territorial  organization  of  States,  nor  forcible  abolition 
of  slavery,  should  be  contemplated  for  a  moment.  In  prose 
cuting  the  war,  all  private  property  and  unarmed  persons 
should  be  strictly  protected,  subject  only  to  the  necessity  of 
military  operations  ;  all  private  property  taken  for  military 


60  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

uses  should  be  paid  or  receipted  for;  pillage  and  waste  should 
be  treated  as  high  crimes,  all  unnecessary  trespass  sternly 
prohibited,  and  offensive  demeanor,  by  the  military  towards 
citizens,  promptly  rebuked.  Military  arrests  should  not  be 
tolerated,  except  in  places  where  active  hostilities  exist ;  and 
oaths,  not  required  by  enactments  constitutionally  made,  should 
be  neither  demanded  nor  received.  Military  government 
should  be  confined  to  the  preservation  of  public  order  and 
the  protection  of  political  right.  Military  power  should  not  be 
allowed  to  interfere  with  the  relations  of  servitude,  either  by  sup 
porting  or  impairing  the  authority  of  the  master,  except  for 
repressing  disorder  as  in  other  cases. 

******* 

"  Unless  the  principles  governing  the  future  conduct  of  our 
struggle  shall  be  made  known  and  approved,  the  effort  to  obtain 
requisite  forces  will  be  almost  hopeless.  A  declaration  of 
radical  views,  especially  upon  slavery,  will  rapidly  disintegrate  our 
present  armies."  ' 

Thenceforth  McClellan  made  no  special  effort  to  con 
ceal  his  presidential  expectations.  Indeed,  it  was  evident 
that,  in  his  own  judgment,  his  military  relations  and  duties 
were  subordinate  to  the  duties  he  owed  his  political  parti 
sans.  His  declaration  to  the  President,  that  decided 
measures  against  slavery  would  disintegrate  our  armies, 
did  not  restrain  Mr.  Lincoln  from  issuing,  on  the  22d  of 
September,  1862,  a  proclamation,  as  "  President  of  the 
United  States  of  America  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  thereof,"  in  which  he  declared — 

"  That  hereafter,  as  heretofore,  the  war  will  be  prosecuted 
for  the  object  of  practically  restoring  the  constitutional  rela 
tion  between  the  United  States  and  each  of  the  States,  and  the 
people  thereof,  in  which  States  that  relation  is  or  may  be  sus 
pended  or  disturbed.  *  *  * 

1  McPherson's  "  Political  History,"  1860-64,  PP-  3^5,  386. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  6 1 

"  That  on  the  first  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty-three,  all  persons  held 
as  slaves,  within  any  State,  or  designated  part  of  a  State,  the 
people  whereof  shall  then  be  in  rebellion  against  the  United 
States,  shall  be  then,  thenceforward,  and  forever  free,  and  the 
Executive  Government  of  the  United  States,  including  the 
military  and  naval  authority  thereof,  will  recognize  and  main 
tain  the  freedom  of  such  persons,  and  will  do  no  act  or  acts  to 
repress  such  persons,  or  any  of  them,  in  any  efforts  they  may 
make  for  their  actual  freedom." 

And  after  reciting  a  recent  act  of  Congress  and  certain 
sections  of  another  act,  the  President  added  : 

"  And  I  do  hereby  enjoin  upon  and  order  all  persons  en 
gaged  in  the  military  and  naval  service  of  the  United  States  to 
observe,  obey,  and  enforce,  within  their  respective  spheres  of 
service,  the  act  and  sections  above  recited."  1 

The  last  paragraph  made  it  the  instant  duty  of  each 
commander  of  forces  in  the  military  and  naval  service  to 
publish  this  proclamation  to  his  command.  As  his  Harri 
son's  Landing  letter  had  been  published  to  the  country  at 
large  simultaneously  with  its  delivery  to  the  President, 
much  curiosity  prevailed  as  to  the  course  McClellan  would 
pursue  under  the  circumstances.  The  duty  required  was 
the  promulgation  of  the  proclamation  in  the  orders  of  the 
day  ;  and  elsewhere  than  at  the  head-quarters  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  it  was  published  as  part  of  the  orders  of 
the  day,  on  the  day  of  its  receipt.  But  not  until  October 
7th  did  McClellan  issue  it  to  his  command,  and  at  that 
late  day  he  qualified  it  by  an  explanatory  order  of  his 
own,  in  which  he  said  : 

"  A  proclamation  of  such  grave  moment  to  the  nation,  offi 
cially  communicated  to  the  army,  affords  to  the  general  com- 

1  McPherson's  "  Political  History,"  1860-64,  PP-  227,  228. 


62  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

manding  an  opportunity  of  defining  specifically  to  the  officers 
and  soldiers  under  his  command  the  relation  borne  by  all  per 
sons  in  the  military  service  of  the  United  States  towards  the 
civil  authorities  of  the  Government." 

And  after  a  dissertation  upon  the  relations  of  the  civil 
and  military  power  of  the  Government,  he  proceeded  to 
console  what  he  evidently  believed  to  be  the  wounded 
spirits  of  his  troops  by  informing  them  that  "  the  remedy 
for  political  errors,  if  any  are  committed,  is  to  be  found 
only  in  the  action  of  the  people  at  the  polls." 

On  the  1 2th  day  of  October,  1863,  the  General,  no 
longer  in  command  of  an  army,  addressed  a  letter  from 
Orange,  N.  J.,  to  the  Hon.  Chas.  J.  Biddle,  a  representa 
tive  in  Congress  from  Philadelphia,  in  which  he  said  : 

"  I  desire  to  state,  clearly  and  distinctly,  that  having,  some 
days  ago,  had  a  full  conversation  with  Judge  Woodward,  I  find 
that  our  views  agree,  and  I  regard  his  election  as  Governor  of 
Pennsylvania  called  for  by  the  interests  of  the  nation."  z 

This  avowal  of  absolute  accord  with  Judge  Woodward 
was  accepted  in  political  circles  as  a  pregnant  fact.  Judge 
Woodward  never  halted  in  uncertain  opinions.  He  was 
a  positive  man,  and  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions. 
Had  he  been  in  the  3/th  Congress  he  would  have  coop 
erated  with  Vallandigham,  Long,  Harris,  and  other 
pronounced  advocates  of  slavery  and  opponents  of  meas 
ures  proposed  in  recognition  of  the  right  of  the  Gov 
ernment  to  use  force  in  the  maintenance  of  the  Union  and 
the  integrity  of  the  country ;  he  would,  of  course,  have 
supported  Pendleton's  resolution'  restricting  the  power  to 
suspend  the  habeas  corpus  to  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States,3  and  have  distinguished  himself  by  the  freedom 

1  McPherson,  p.  227.     *  McPherson,  p.  386.     3  Supra  page  12. 


LINCOLN'  AND   STANTON.  63 

and  intensity  of  his  denunciation  of  the  Government,  and 
of  his  fellow-citizens  who  denied  the  recently  promulgated 
dogma  that  slavery  was  national  and  existed  of  right 
under  the  national  flag,  whether  on  sea  or  land.  In  his 
judgment  every  American  citizen  was  hostile  to  the  best 
interests  of  his  country  who  would  not  consent  to  the 
abrogation  of  the  policy  of  Jefferson,  as  embodied  in  the 
ordinance  of  1787,  by  which  slavery  had  been  forever 
excluded  from  the  Northwestern  Territory,  and  approve 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  under  which 
statutory  adjustment,  the  right  to  restrict  the  territorial 
limits  of  slavery  had  been  recognized  for  nearly  half  a 
century. 

Judge  Woodward  was  one  of  the  few  men  of  the  North 
who  were  accredited  with  the  open  expression  of  a  pref 
erence  that  the  dividing  line,  should  a  division  of  the 
Union  occur,  should  be  north  of  Pennsylvania  and  west 
of  New  England  ;  and  in  his  well-considered  and  famous 
speech,  to  the  meeting  assembled  on  the  call  of  the  Mayor 
of  Philadelphia,  in  Independence  Square,  on  the  I3th  of 
December,  1860,  he  said  : 

"  The  inexorable  exclusion  of  slave  property  from  the  com 
mon  territories  which  the  Government  holds  in  trust  for  the 
people  of  all  the  States,  is  a  natural  and  direct  step  toward  the 
grand  result  of  extinguishing  slave  property,  and  was  one  of 
the  record  issues  of  the  late  election.  This  policy  must  be 
considered  as  approved  also.  Not  that  every  man  who  voted 
for  the  successful  nominee  meant  to  affirm  that  a  trustee  for 
several  coequal  parties  has  a  right,  in  law  or  reason,  to  exclude 
the  property  of  some  and  admit  that  of  others,  for  whom  he 
holds  ;  but  so  is  the  record.  The  South  seems  inclined  to 
accept  the  judgment.  She  holds  the  property  that  is  to  be 
shut  out  of  the  Territories, — that  is  to  be  restricted,  cribbed, 


64  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

and  confined  more  and  more  until  it  is  finally  extinguished. 
Everywhere  in  the  South  the  people  are  beginning  to  look  out 
for  the  means  of  self-defence.  Could  it  be  expected  that  she 
would  be  indifferent  to  such  events  as  have  occurred  ? — that 
she  would  stand  idle,  and  see  measures  concerted  and  carried 
forward  for  the  annihilation  of  her  property  in  slaves  ?  Several 
States  propose  to  retire  from  the  Confederacy,  and  that  justly 
alarms  us.  We  come  together  to  consider  what  may  be  done 
to  prevent  it  ;  and  we  are  bound,  in  fidelity  to  ourselves  and 
others,  to  take  the  measure  of  the  whole  magnitude  of  the 
danger."1  *  *  * 

"  Have  I  not  a  right  to  say,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that  a  gov 
ernment  which  was  all-sufficient  for  the  country  fifty  years 
ago,  when  soil  and  climate  and  State  sovereignty  were  trusted 
to  regulate  the  spread  of  slavery,  is  insufficient  to-day,  when 
every  upstart  politician  can  stir  the  people  to  mutiny  against 
the  domestic  institutions  of  our  Southern  neighbors — when  the 
ribald  jests  of  seditious  editors  like  Greeley  and  Beecher  can 
sway  legislatures  and  popular  votes  against  the  handiwork  of 
Washington  or  Madison."  2 

Thus  General  McClellan's  exemplar  closed  his  speech 
on  that  momentous  occasion,  by  announcing  his  readi 
ness  to  unite  in  promoting  such  a  revision  of  the 
Constitution,  framed  by  Washington  and  Madison,  as 
would  be  satisfactory  to  the  slave-holding  minority  of 
the  Southern  people.  These  extreme  opinions  were  not 
lightly  held  by  Judge  Woodward.  Nor  was  their  con 
trolling  influence  limited  to  his  personal  conduct.  They 
regulated  his  official  action.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
Pennsylvania  then  consisted  of  five  judges,  and  in  oppo 
sition  to  the  otherwise  almost  unbroken  current  of  judicial 
decision,  by  Federal  and  State  courts,  he  gave  the  casting 
vote  by  which  the  Conscription  Law  was  declared  to  be 

1  "  The  American  Conflict,"  vol.   I.,  p.  364.  a  Ibid. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  65 

unconstitutional,  and  its  enforcement  rendered  impracti 
cable  in  Pennsylvania.  The  opinion  of  the  court  was 
delivered  by  Chief-Justice  Lowrie,  whose  commission  was 
about  to  expire,  and  who,  having  been  renominated,  was 
then  a  candidate  for  reelection.  But  Judge  Woodward 
was  unwilling  that  the  per-Curiam  opinion  should  speak 
for  him,  and  in  the  course  of  an  opinion  delivered  by 
himself  said  : 

"  The  great  vice  of  the  Conscript  Law  is  that  it  is  founded 
on  an  assumption  that  Congress  may  take  away,  not  the  State 
rights  of  a  citizen,  but  the  security  and  foundation  of  his  State 
rights.  And  how  long  is  civil  liberty  expected  to  last  after  the 
securities  of  civil  liberty  are  destroyed  ?  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  committed  the  liberties  of  the  citizen  in  part 
to  the  Federal  Government,  but  expressly  reserved  to  the 
States  and  the  people  of  the  States  all  it  did  not  delegate.  It 
gave  the  General  Government  a  standing  army,  but  left  to  the 
States  their  militia.  Its  purposes  in  all  this  balancing  of 
power  were  wise  and  good,  but  this  legislation  disregards  these 
distinctions  and  upturns  the  whole  system  of  government  when 
it  converts  the  State  militia  into  '  National  Forces,'  and  claims 
to  use  and  govern  them  as  such."  1 

How  violently  the  opinions  of  the  Judge  were  strained 
against  the  Northern  cause  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the 
Circuit  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Eastern  Dis 
trict  of  Pennsylvania,  both  of  whose  judges,  Greer  and 
Cadwallader,  were  life-long  Democrats,  after  having  lis 
tened  to  the  amplest  argument  against  the  constitution 
ality  of  the  law,  affirmed  it,  and  in  the  course  of  their 
opinion  said  : 

"  This  review  of  the  principal  enactment  of  the  law  suffices 
1  Kneedler  vs.  Lane,  45,  Pa.  State  Reps.,  p.  252. 


66  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

to  indicate  its'  general  purposes.  The  organization  of  armies 
under  it  is  to  cease  on  the  termination  of  the  Civil  War,  for 
whose  exigencies  it  provides  ;  and  the  term  of  service  of  those 
drafted  under  it  cannot  exceed  three  years,  though  the  war 
should  continue  longer.  Such  limitations  of  the  time  would 
have  prevented  the  compulsory  requirement  of  military  service 
from  being  unconstitutional,  though  it  had  included  every  able- 
bodied  male  inhabitant."  1 

The  State  election  was  held  on  the  8th  of  October, 
when  Chief-Justice  Lowrie  was  defeated  by  Daniel  Ag- 
new,  a  lawyer  who,  though  comparatively  unknown  to  the 
people  of  the  State,  enjoyed  a  high  reputation  among 
his  professional  brethren,  and  the  question  having  been 
reargued  before  the  court  as  now  constituted,  it  vacated 
the  orders  granted  in  the  cases  heard  in  November,  and 
affirmed  the  constitutionality  of  the  act,  Chief-Justice 
Strong  and  Justices  John  M.  Read  and  Agnew  making 
the  order,  and  Justices  Woodward  and  Thompson  reit 
erating  their  denial  of  its  constitutionality.  In  closing 
the  opinion  of  the  court,  which  was  delivered  by  Justice 
Agnew,  who,  as  if  to  emphasize  the  grounds  of  his  dissent 
from  Judge  Woodward's  opinion,  said  : 

"  The  constitutional  authority  to  use  the  national  forces 
creates  a  corresponding  duty  to  provide  a  number  adequate  to 
the  necessity.  The  duty  is  vital  and  essential,  falling  back  on 
the  fundamental  right  of  self-preservation,  and  the  powers 
expressed  to  declare  war,  raise  armies,  maintain  navies,  and 
provide  for  the  common  defence.  Power  and  duty  now  go 
hand  in  hand  with  the  extremity  until  every  available  man  in 
the  nation  is  called  into  service,  if  the  emergency  requires  it, 
and  of  this  there  can  be  no  judge  but  Congress."  2 

1  McPherson,  p.  273. 
2  Smith  vs.  Lane  et  al.    Grant's  Cases,  Sup.  Ct.,  Pa.,  vol.  III.,  p.  552. 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  6j 

Horatio  Seymour,  Governor  of  New  York,  sought  dis 
tinction  by  opposing  the  draft,  and  while  the  Anti-Draft 
riots  raged  in  New  York,  announced  to  a  tumultuous  mob 
of  his  "  friends  "  that  he  had  prepared  an  appeal  from  the 
action  of  the  Administration  which  he  had  transmitted  to 
the  President  by  his  adjutant.1  The  conduct  of  Governor 
Seymour  in  thus  exciting  popular  resistance  to  the  en 
forcement  of  the  Conscription  Law  invited  a  discussion  of 
the  subject  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  who,  in  replying  to  the  Gov 
ernor's  appeal,  demonstrated  the  necessity  for,  and  conse 
quently  the  constitutionality  of,  the  law.  In  the  course 
of  his  letter  the  President  said  : 

"  I  do  not  object  to  abide  the  decision  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court,  or  of  the  Judges  thereof,  on  the  constitution 
ality  of  the  Draft  Law.  In  fact,  I  should  be  willing  to  facili 
tate  the  obtaining  of  it.  But  I  cannot  consent  to  lose  the  time 
while  it  is  being  obtained.  We  are  contending  with  an  enemy 
who,  as  I  understand,  drives  every  able-bodied  man  he  can 
reach  into  his  ranks  very  much  as  a  butcher  drives  bullocks 
into  a  slaughter-pen.  No  time  is  wasted  ;  no  argument  is 
used.  This  produces  an  army  which  will  soon  turn  upon  our 
now  victorious  soldiers,  already  in  the  field,  if  they  shall  not 
be  sustained  by  recruits  as  they  should  be.  It  produces  an 
army  with  a  rapidity  not  to  be  matched  on  our  side,  if  we  first 
waste  time  to  reexperiment  with  the  volunteer  system,  already 
deemed  by  Congress,  and  palpably  in  fact,  so  far  exhausted  as 
to  be  inadequate  ;  and  then  more  time  to  obtain  a  court  de 
cision  as  to  whether  the  law  is  constitutional  which  requires  a 
part  of  those  not  now  in  the  service  to  go  to  the  aid  of  those 
who  are  already  in  it  ;  and  still  more  time  to  determine  with 
absolute  certainty  that  we  get  those  who  are  to  go  in  the  pre 
cisely  legal  proportion  to  those  who  are  not  to  go.  My  pur- 

1  "  New  York  and  the  Conscription  of  1863,"  General  James  B.  Fry.  G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons.  Also  :<  The  American  Conflict,"  vol.  II.,  pp.  506—507. 


68  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

pose  is  to  be  in  my  action  just  and  constitutional,  and  yet 
practical,  in  performing  the  important  duty  with  which  I  am 
charged,  of  maintaining  the  unity  and  the  free  principles  of 
our  common  country."  1 

On  the  2Qth  of  August,  1864,  a  convention  assembled 
at  Chicago  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  candidates  for 
President  and  Vice-President.  The  call  under  which  it 
assembled  was  for  a  Democratic  national  convention,  and 
Governor  Seymour  presided  over  its  deliberations.  It  was, 
however,  not  a  convention  of  representative  Democrats, 
for  it  resolved  "  that  after  four  years  of  failure  to  restore 
the  Union  by  the  experiment  of  war,"  "  justice,  humanity, 
liberty,  and  the  public  welfare  demand  that  immediate 
efforts  be  made  for  a  cessation  of  hostilities,"  and  one  of 
the  attending  orators  declared  that  there  was  no  "  real 
difference  between  a  war  Democrat  and  an  Abolitionist." 
General  McClellan  was  nominated  for  the  Presidency  on 
the  first  ballot  by  a  vote  of  2O2-J-  to  23^,  and  Geo.  H. 
Pendleton  was  unanimously  nominated  for  the  Vice-Presi 
dency.  At  the  November  election  these  nominees  re 
ceived  a  majority  of  the  votes  cast  in  three  States — New 
Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Kentucky. 

In  his  memorial  on  the  life,  character,  and  services 
of  William  H.  Seward,  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams 
set  forth  such  estimates  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  intelligence> 
and  made  such  statements  as  to  his  relations  to  the 
administration  of  which  he  was  always  the  master  spirit, 
that  Hon.  Gideon  Welles,  who  from  Mr.  Lincoln's 
nomination  for  the  presidency  till  the  day  of  his  death 
had  enjoyed  familiar  and  confidential  intercourse  with 
him,  felt  constrained  to  vindicate  his  memory  from  the 
aspersions  cast  upon  it  by  one  whom  he  had  honored  with 

1  "  The  American  Conflict,"  vol.  II.,  p.  508. 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  69 

such  distinguished  evidence  of  his  confidence  as  the  be 
stowal  of  the  mission  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  Mr. 
Welles  was  one  of  the  ablest  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  official 
family.  He  had  never  been  stung  by  the  presidential 
bee,  and  was  indifferent  to  popular  applause,  but  was 
a  diligent  student  and  an  industrious  chronicler  of 
current  events.  His  ample  diary  is  for  the  present  a 
sealed  book.  It  was  written  for  the  future,  and  will 
not,  unless  his  wishes  shall  be  disregarded,  be  read  by 
this  generation.  Moved  to  indignation  by  the  misrepre 
sentations  of  Mr.  Adams,  Mr.  Welles  drew  upon  the 
store-house  of  his  memory  and  the  pages  of  his  diary  for 
the  materials  with  which  to  vindicate  the  intelligence  and 
conduct  of  President  Lincoln.  Thanks  to  this  labor  of 
love,1  I  am  able  to  answer  my  second  question,  and  tell  in 
his  own  language  why  Mr.  Lincoln  restored  McClellan  to 
the  command  of  his  old  army  after  his  betrayal  of  Pope, 
and  when  the  President  and  every  member  of  his  Cabinet 
knew  he  had  forfeited  their  confidence  by  "  atrocious  " 
misconduct.  Says  Mr.  Welles  : 

"  At  the  stated  Cabinet  meeting,  on  Tuesday,  the  second  of 
September,  while  the  whole  community  was  stirred  up  and  in 
confusion,  and  affairs  were  gloomy  beyond  any  thing  that  had 
previously  occurred,  Stanton  entered  the  council-room  a  few 
minutes  in  advance  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  said,  with  great  ex 
citement,  he  had  just  learned  from  General  Halleck  that  the 
President  had  placed  McClellan  in  command  of  the  forces  in 
Washington.  The  information  was  surprising,  and  in  view  of 
the  prevailing  excitement  against  that  officer,  alarming.  The 
President  soon  came  in,  and  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  from  Mr. 
Chase,  confirmed  what  Stanton  had  stated.  General  regret 
was  expressed,  and  Stanton,  with  some  feeling,  remarked  that 

1  "  Lincoln  and  Seward,"  by  Gideon  Welles,  p.  194.     Sheldon  &  Co. 


70  LINCOLN  AND  STANTON. 

no  order  to  that  effect  had  issued  from  the  War  Department. 
The  President,  calmly  but  with  some  emphasis,  said  the  order 
was  his,  and  he  would  be  responsible  for  it  to  the  country. 
With  a  retreating  and  demoralized  army  tumbling  in  upon  us, 
and  alarm  and  panic  in  the  community,  it  was  necessary,  the 
President  said,  that  something  should  be  done,  but  there 
seemed  to  be  no  one  to  do  it.  He  therefore  had  directed 
McClellan,  who  knew  this  whole  ground,  who  was  the  best 
organizer  in  the  army,  whose  faculty  was  to  organize  and  de 
fend,  and  who  would  here  act  upon  the  defensive,  to  take  this 
defeated  and  shattered  army  and  reorganize  it.  He  knew  full 
well  the  infirmities  of  McClellan,  who  was  not  an  affirmative 
man, — was  worth  little  for  an  onward  movement ;  but  beyond 
any  other  officer  he  had  the  confidence  of  the  army,  and  he 
could  more  efficiently  and  speedily  reorganize  it  and  put  it  in 
condition  than  any  other  general.  If  the  Secretary  of  War  or 
any  member  of  the  Cabinet  would  name  a  general  that  could 
do  this  as  promptly  and  well  he  would  appoint  him.  For  an 
active,  fighting  general,  he  was  sorry  to  say  McClellan  was  a 
failure  ;  he  had  '  the  slows/ — was  never  ready  for  battle,  and 
probably  never  would  be  ;  but  for  this  exigency,  when  organi 
zation  and  defence  were  needed,  he  considered  him  the  best 
man  for  the  service,  and  the  country  must  have  the  benefit  of 
his  talents,  though  he  had  behaved  badly.  The  President  said 
he  had  seen  and  given  his  opinion  to  General  Halleck,  who 
was  still  General-in-Chief  ;  but  Halleck  had  no  plan  or  views 
of  his  own,  proposed  to  do  nothing  himself,  and  fully  approved 
his  calling  upon  McClellan. 

"  In  stating  what  he  had  done  the  President  was  deliberate, 
but  firm  and  decisive.  His  language  and  manner  were  kind 
and  affectionate,  especially  toward  two  of  the  members,  who 
were  greatly  disturbed  ;  but  every  person  present  felt  that  he 
was  truly  the  chief,  and  every  one  knew  his  decision,  though 
mildly  expressed,  was  as  fixed  and  unalterable  as  if  given  out 
with  the  imperious  command  and  determined  will  of  Andrew 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  71 

Jackson.  A  long  discussion  followed,  closing  with  acquies 
cence  in  the  decision  of  the  President,  but  before  separating 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  expressed  his  apprehension  that 
the  reinstatement  of  McClellan  would  prove  a  national  calamity. 

"  In  this  instance  the  President,  unaided  by  others,  put  forth 
with  firmness  and  determination  the  Executive  will — the  one- 
man  power — against  the  temporary  general  sense  of  the  com 
munity,  as  well  as  of  his  Cabinet,  two  of  whom,  it  had  been 
generally  supposed,  had  with  him  an  influence  almost  as  great 
as  the  Secretary  of  State.  They  had  been  ready  to  make  issue 
and  resign  their  places  unless  McClellan  was  dismissed  ;  but 
yet,  knowing  their  opposition,  and  in  spite  of  it,  and  of  the 
general  dissatisfaction  in  the  community,  the  President  had  in 
that  perilous  moment  exalted  him  to  new  and  important  trusts. 

"  In  an  interview  with  the  President  on  the  succeeding  Friday, 
when  only  he  and  myself  were  present,  he  unburthened  his 
mind  freely.  Military  matters  were  still  in  confusion,  without 
plan  or  purpose,  at  head-quarters.  The  Secretary  of  War, 
under  Pope's  defeat  and  McClellan's  reinstatement,  was  not 
only  disappointed,  but  dejected'  and  dispirited.  The  President 
said  most  of  our  troubles  grew  out  of  military  jealousies. 
Whether  changing  the  plan  of  operations  (discarding  McClel 
lan  and  placing  Pope  in  command  in  front)  was  wise  or  not, 
was  not  now  the  matter  in  hand.  These  things,  right  or 
wrong,  had  been  done.  If  the  administration  had  erred,  the 
country  should  not  have  been  made  to  suffer,  nor  our  brave 
men  cut  down  and  butchered.  Pope  should  have  been  sus 
tained,  but  he  was  not.  These  personal  and  professional 
quarrels  came  in.  Whatever  may  have  been  said  to  the  con 
trary,  it  could  not  be  denied  that  the  army  was  with  McClel 
lan.  He  had  so  skilfully  handled  his  troops  in  not  getting  to 
Richmond  as  to  retain  their  confidence.  The  soldiers  certainly 
had  not  transferred  their  confidence  to  Pope.  He  could, 
however,  do  no  more  good  in  this  quarter.  It  was  humiliating, 
after  what  had  transpired,  and  all  we  knew,  to  reward  McClellan 


72  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

and  those  who  failed  to  do  their  whole  duty  in  the  hour  of  trial, 
but  so  it  was.  Personal  considerations  must  be  sacrificed  for 
the  public  good.  He  had  kept  aloof  from  the  dissensions  that 
prevailed,  and  intended  to  ;  '  but,'  said  he,  '  I  must  have 
McClellan  to  reorganize  the  army  and  bring  it  out  of  chaos. 
There  has  been  a  design,  a  purpose,  in  breaking  down  Pope, 
without  regard  to  the  consequences  to  the  country,  that  is 
atrocious.  It  is  shocking  to  see  and  know  this,  but  there  is  no 
remedy  at  present.  McClellan  has  the  army  with  him.'  These 
were  the  views  and  this  the  course  of  the  President  when  there 
was  general  dismay  in  the  country  and  confusion  in  the  army  ; 
the  rebels  near  the  intrenchments  of  Washington,  and  some  of 
the  Cabinet  alarmed  and  preparing  to  leave.  The  President 
was  not  insensible  to  the  deficiencies  or  ignorant  of  the  faults 
of  McClellan,  nor  yet  blind  to  and  stubborn  as  regarded  his 
better  qualities.  In  placing  him  at  the  head  of  the  army  he 
went  counter  to  the  wishes  of  his  friends,  and,  forgetful  of  all 
else,  he  subdued  every  personal  feeling,  and  in  the  spirit  of  un 
selfish  patriotism  resolved  to  do  what  was  for  the  true  interest 
of  the  country.  Had  the  General  followed  up  the  battle  of 
Antietam,  which  took  place  a  fortnight  later,  he  would  have 
retrieved  the  misfortunes  of  the  Peninsula,  and  given  to  the 
President  additional  reason  to  congratulate  himself  on  the  rein 
statement,  but  the  old  dilatory  infirmity  remained,  which 
strengthened  the  influence  that  persistently  opposed  him,  and 
soon  after  led  to  his  being  retired  from  the  command  of  the 
army." 

On  the  third  day  after  the  Pennsylvania  election  of 
October,  1862,  I  was  the  President's  first  visitor,  and 
had  just  entered  upon  an  earnest  conversation  with 
him  on  the  subject  of  McClellan's  mismanagement  in 
permitting  the  battle  of  Antietam  to  cease  before  the 
sun  had  set  and  while  Fitz-John  Porter's  corps— number 
ing  35>ooo  men — was  still  in  reserve,  with  its  entire  supply 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  73 

of  ammunition,  when  my  colleague  from  the  Gettysburg 
district,  Hon.  Edward  McPherson,  entered  the  Executive 
Chamber.  Though  there  was  no  concert  of  action  be 
tween  us,  McPherson  was  quickly  followed  by  our  col 
league,  Hon.  J.  K.  Moorhead,  who,  having  left  Pittsburg 
the  previous  morning,  had  spent  the  night  at  Harrisburg  in 
consultation  with  leading  citizens  of  the  State,  and  has 
tened  by  the  morning  train  to  Washington  for  conference 
with  the  President. 

The  details  of  our  common  interview  constitute  part 
of  an  article,  which  will  appear  elsewhere,1  and  I  refer  to 
the  occasion  because  it  elicited  from  the  President  a  sub 
stantial  reiteration  of  what  he  said  to  Mr.  Welles  in  the 
private  interview  just  quoted. 

After  considerable  discussion  my  colleagues  withdrew, 
leaving  me  again  alone  with  the  President,  when  our 
conversation  was  resumed  at  the  point  at  which  it  had 
been  interrupted.  This  was  just  after  I  had  said  that 
though  Lee's  forces  had  been  driven  into  a  cul-de-sac,  the 
outlet  from  which  was  a  ford  that  offered  but  an  imper 
fect  roadway  for  a  single  line  of  guns  or  wagons,  and 
that  although  Fitz-John  Porter's  whole  corps  was  fresh, 
having,  with  its  entire  supply  of  ammunition,  been  held 
in  reserve,  Lee  had  been  allowed,  without  serious  moles 
tation,  to  retreat  beyond  the  river,  with  his  artillery  and 
supply-trains.  Mr.  Lincoln  deplored  this  failure  to 
achieve  the  decisive  result,  which  he  said  he  believed 
had  been  clearly  within  McClellan's  grasp,  and  admitting 
his  absolute  unfitness  for  the  position  he  had  occupied, 
said  it  was  one  to  which  he  had  not  deliberately  as 
signed  him.  He  had,  he  said,  restored  him  to  command 
to  reorganize  a  broken  and  demoralized  army,  and  not 

1  "  Reminiscences  of  Abraham  Lincoln,"  by  men  who  knew  him. 


74  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

to  fight  a  great  battle,  and  he  owed  his  command  at 
Antietam  quite  as  much  to  Lee  as  he  did  to  him,  for 
while  the  work  of  reorganization  was  proceeding,  Lee's 
attempt  to  flank  the  capital,  by  moving  into  Maryland, 
had  compelled  him  to  order  the  army  to  move  and  check 
his  advance.  At  this  point,  with  a  smile  which  might  ex 
press  pity  or  sarcasm,  or  a  mingling  of  both,  Mr.  Lincoln 
said  :  "  Whatever  the  troops  and  people  may  think  and 
say  of  his  failure  to  capture  Lee's  army  and  supplies,  my 
censure  should  be  tempered  by  the  consciousness  of 
the  fact  that  I  did  not  restore  him  to  command  for 
aggressive  fighting,  but  as  an  organizer  and  a  good  hand 
at  defending  a  position."  In  response  to  the  suggestion 
of  familiar  facts,  or  to  questions,  Mr.  Lincoln  admitted 
that  McClellan,  by  incessant,  and  frequently  unfounded, 
complaints  which  were  calculated  to  impair  their  confi 
dence  in  his  superiors,  the  President  and  Secretary  of 
War,  had  done  much  to  destroy  the  morale  of  his  troops, 
and  that  he  had  wantonly  sacrificed  Pope ;  and  said 
that  to  entrust  to  him  the  rescue  of  the  army  from  its  de 
moralization  was  a  good  deal  like  "  curing  the  bite  with 
the  hair  of  the  dog."  He  said  he  regarded  his  position  at 
the  time  of  McClellan's  restoration  as  a  striking  and  note 
worthy  illustration  of  the  dangers  to  which  Republican 
institutions  were  subjected  by  wars  of  such  magnitude  as 
might  produce  ambitious  and  rival  commanders  ;  for  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  civil  power  of  the  Government 
was  then  subordinate  to  the  military,  and  though  he  acted 
as  Commander-in-Chief,  he  found  himself  in  that  season 
of  insubordination,  panic,  and  general  demoralization  con 
sciously  under  military  duress.  McClellan  even  while 
fighting  battles  which  should  produce  no  result  but  the 
expenditure  of  men  and  means,  had  contrived  to  keep  the 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  7$ 

troops  with  him,  and  by  charging  each  new  failure  to  some 
alleged  dereliction  of  the  Secretary  of  War  and  President, 
had  created  an  impression  among  them  that  the  adminis 
tration  was  hostile  to  him,  and  withheld  vital  elements  of 
success  that  should  have  been  accorded  to  him,  and  which, 
in  some  instances,  he  falsely  represented  as  having  been 
promised  to  him.  He  said,  with  much  deliberation,  that 
he  believed  the  restoration  to  command  of  McClellan, 
Porter,  and  other  of  his  chiefs,  in  the  face  of  the  treasonable 
misconduct  of  which  they  had  been  so  flagrantly  guilty  in 
the  sacrifice  of  Pope's  army,  was  the  greatest  trial  and 
most  painful  duty  of  his  official  life.  Yet,  situated  as  he 
was,  it  seemed  to  be  his  duty,  and  in  opposition  to  every 
member  of  his  Cabinet  he  performed  it,  and  felt  no  regret 
for  what  he  had  done. 

u  I  am  now/'  said  he,  "  stronger  with  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  than  McClellan.  The  supremacy  of  the  civil 
power  has  been  restored,  and  the  Executive  is  again  mas 
ter  of  the  situation.  The  troops  know,  that  if  I  made  a 
mistake  in  substituting  Pope  for  McClellan,  I  was  capable 
of  rectifying  it  by  again  trusting  him.  They  know,  too, 
that  neither  Stanton  nor  I  withheld  any  thing  from  him 
at  Antietam,  and  that  it  was  not  the  administration, 
but  their  own  former  idol,  who  surrendered  the  just 
results  of  their  terrible  sacrifices  and  closed  the  great  fight 
as  a  drawn  battle,  when,  had  he  thrown  Porter's  corps  of 
fresh  men  and  other  available  troops  upon  Lee's  army,  he 
would  inevitably  have  driven  it  in  disorder  to  the  river 
and  captured  most  of  it  before  sunset." 

When  we  parted,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  not  said  in  direct 
terms  that  it  was  his  purpose  to  relieve  McClellan  ;  he  had, 
however,  discussed  the  relative  availability  of  certain  gen 
erals  for  the  command,  and  the  tenor  of  his  remarks  justi- 


76  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

fied  me  in  saying  to  some  of  my  fellow-citizens,  on  my 
return  to  Philadelphia,  that  McClellan's  military  career 
had  practically  ended,  and  that  he  would  soon  be  succeeded 
in  command  by  Hooker  or  Burnside.  At  Warrenton,  Va., 
on  the  /th  of  November,  Geo.  B.  McClellan  received  an 
order  to  turn  his  command  over  to  General  Burnside,  and 
report  to  the  Department  by  letter  from  Trenton,  New 
Jersey,  by  a  prompt  compliance  with  which  order  he 
closed  his  inglorious  military  career. 

Under  a  sense  of  obligation  to  the  truth  of  history,  and 
to  the  memory  of  two  men  who,  while  bearing  the  bur 
dens  of  the  grandest  of  civil  wars,  admitted  me  to  their 
confidence  and  such  intimate  relations  as  enabled  me  to 
see,  in  their  example,  with  how  single  an  eye  to  the  good 
of  their  country  men  may  devote  their  lives,  have  I  thus 
endeavored  to  discharge  a  solemn  duty. 


APPENDIX. 


While  compiling  the  foregoing  vindication  of  President 
Lincoln  and  Mr.  Stanton,  I  dictated  an  article  for  a  volume 
which  will  shortly  appear  under  the  title  of  "  Reminis 
cences  of  Abraham  Lincoln  by  Men  Who  Knew  Him,"  in 
which  I  embodied  vivid  and,  in  several  instances,  oft- 
repeated  recollections  of  interviews  with  Mr.  Lincoln.  Of 
these,  one  was  with  a  deputation  of  Progressive  Friends, 
and  another  with  Prof.  Goldwin  Smith,  both  of  which 
were  published  in  the  New  York  Tribune  and  other 
papers.  To  my  account  of  the  interview  with  the  Friends 
Mr.  Oliver  Johnson  took  exception,  and  in  a  letter  to  the 
Tribune  criticised  it  sharply  and  denied  its  allegations. 
The  confidence  with  which  Mr.  Johnson  disputed  my 
statements  demanded  a  reply,  which  I  submitted  through 
the  columns  of  the  Tribune.  As  the  historical  facts,  by 
reference  to  which  I  make  good  my  disputed  assertions, 
might  well  have  been  incorporated  in  the  original  text,— 
and  as  the  volume  has  not  yet  gone  through  the  press, — 
I  herewith  append  the  letter  to  the  Tribune  in  which  they 
were  embodied. 

To  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  Tribune. 

SIR  : — In  the  Tribune  of  September  6th  is  a  communication 
from  Oliver  Johnson,  which  would  have  received  earlier  atten 
tion  had  I  not  been  enjoying  needed  rest  in  the  health-giving 

77 


7  8  LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON. 

valley  of  the  Genesee,  and  away  from  books,  papers,  and  cor-* 
respondence.  It  purports  to  correct  my  account  of  the  inter 
view  of  the  Progressive  Friends  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  closes 
with  the  remark  "  that  if  the  Tribune  '  Reminiscences  of  Lin 
coln  '  are  to  take  a  permanent  form  in  our  literature  Mr. 
Kelley's  contribution  will  need  to  be  carefully  expurgated  and 
reconstructed." 

As  the  Tribune  has  said  that  too  much  light  cannot  be 
thrown  on  that  important  matter — Mr.  Lincoln's  attitude  tow 
ard  the  Abolitionists  before  he  emancipated  the  slaves, — you 
will,  I  doubt  not,  give  me  space  in  which  to  show  that  it  is 
Mr.  Johnson  who  is  in  error  on  that  point.  He  says  I 
"was  unable  to  give  the  name  of  the  religious  body  which 
the  deputation  represented,  and  could  only  describe  it  vaguely 
as  an  '  independent  organization  '  ;  that  it  was  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Yearly  Meeting  of  Progressive  Friends  which  the  depu 
tation  represented  ;  that  the  object  was  not,  as  I  had  said,  to 
present  a  Minute,  but  a  formal  and  solemn  Memorial,  to  the 
President  ;  and  that  I  appear  not  to  have  recollected  the 
name  of  a  single  member  of  the  deputation." 

It  happens  that  although  the  gentleman  who  acted  as  my 
amanuensis  at  the  time  I  dictated  the  article  under  con 
sideration  has  resided  in  Virginia  for  more  than  sixty  days, 
and  had,  before  leaving,  destroyed  much  rejected  manuscript, 
I  find  among  my  papers  a  number  of  pages  of  his  first  draft, 
from  one  of  which  I  quote  as  follows  :  "  It  was,  I  believe, 
during  1852  that  there  was  organized  at  Longwood,  Chester 
County,  Pa.,  a  religious  society  to  be  known  as  Progressive 
Friends,  to  consist  of  men  and  women  who  attached  higher 
importance  to  purity  of  life  and  unselfish  conduct  than  to 
creeds  and  dogmas.  That  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath 
should  be  maintained  by  this  sect  without  a  creed,  and  church 
without  a  preache'r,  a  meeting-house  was  erected  in  which  a 
hymn  is  sung  on  each  First  Day,  after  which  earnest  men  and 
women  may  deliver  to  assembled  Friends  communications  on 


TAN  TON.  79 

lich  they:  may  believe  themselves  to 
rly  meeting  of  the  Society  is  held 
.1  part  of  the  year,  in  that  region  of 
e  and  flowers.  John  G.  Whittier, 
..n  Lloyd  Garrison,  Wendell  Phillips, 

Fred  liiiam  Elder,  George  William  Curtis, 

Henr  of  distinguished  Liberals  have  par 

ticipated  m  me.se  thoughtful  anniversaries." 

I  find,  too,  that  I  named  Oliver  Johnson  as  the  person  who 
read  the  Minute  to  the  President  ;  and  I  aver  that  I  vividly 
remembered  the  names  of  four  of  the  six  delegates  whom  he 
mentions. 

Mr.  Johnson  and  others  may  ask  why,  if  all  this  and  much 
more  on  the  same  subject  was  written,  did  none  of  it  appear  in 
the  article  as  printed  ?  The  reason  was  that  the  object  of  my 
paper  was  to  present,  in  compliance  with  the  request  of  the 
person  v/ho  invited  me  to  do  the  work,  facts  illustrative  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  character.  "It  is  not,"  said  he,  "for  impres 
sions  of  his  character,  for  but  incidents  illustrative  thereof,  that 
we  ask  "  ;  and  while  I  deemed  the  interview  under  consideration 
an  eminently  characteristic  incident,  I  feared  that  if  I  printed 
what  I  had  dictated,  the  article  might  be  regarded  as  a  remi 
niscence  of  Progressive  Friends,  and  not  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  I 
therefore  struck  out  what  related  solely  to  the  Society  and  its 
members,  and  thus  furnished  Mr.  Johnson  ground  for  his 
erroneous  conclusion  that  my  recollection  of  the  occasion  was 
"  of  a  very  shadowy  kind." 

One  fact  I  did  not  remember  :  it  was  the  day  of  the  month 
on  which  the  interview  occurred  ;  but,  in  the  absence  of  that 
knowledge  and  while  believing  it  to  have  been  much  earlier  in 
the  month,  I  was  able  to  say,  from  the  President's  appearance 
and  manner  when  we  entered  the  room,  "  that  the  visit  was  in 
opportune.  The  air  was  full  of  evil  rumors  from  the  Peninsula, 
and  the  President  had  evidently  passed  a  night  of  anxiety  "  ; 
to  which  I  added,  "  that  the  guests,,  who  were  strangers  to  the 


80  LINCOLN  AND  STANTON. 

President,  did  not  perceive,  as  those  familiar  with  him  did, 
that  there  was  an  unusual  air  of  impatience  in  his  manner." 

If  offence  were  given  to  the  Society,  or  its  representatives, 
by  my  use  of  the  word  Minute  instead  of  Memorial,  it  was  the 
result  of  conscientious  effort  on  my  part  to  use  the  appropriate 
word.  Halting  between  Testimony,  Memorial,  and  Communi 
cation,  I  went  to  the  office  of  a  number  of  Quaker  lawyers, 
and,  telling  them  that  I  had  prepared  a  paper  on  the  "  Pro 
gressive  Friends  at  the  White  House,"  asked  for  the  proper 
word  to  use  in  describing  the  scroll  on  which  the  views, 
formally  expressed  by  the  Yearly  Meeting,  were  embodied.  I 
was  told  that  Friendly  parlance  required  the  use  of  the  word 
Minute  ;  as  the  representatives  had  borne  to  the  President  a 
certified  Minute  that  a  Memorial  in  the  words  presented  had 
been  formally  adopted  by  the  Society. 

I  have  not  said,  as  Mr.  Johnson  says  I  seem  to  think,  "  that 
the  visit  was  an  impertinence";  what  I  did  say  was  that  "it 
was  inopportune,"  to  which  I  now  add  that,  containing  as  the 
Memorial  did,  a  direct  intimation  to  the  President  that  the 
Progressive  Friends  regarded  him  as  faithless  to  promises  he 
had  made  when  seeking  the  Presidential  office,  it  could  not 
have  been  otherwise  than  offensive  to  him. 

Mr.  Johnson  will  pardon  me  for  saying,  as  I  do  with  entire 
respect,  that  I  believe  him  to  have  been  the  author  of  the 
report  to  the  Tribune,  which  he  cites  against  me  with  so  much 
confidence.  He  was  an  experienced  newspaper  man,  and  had 
previously  given  the  Tribune  the  benefit  of  his  experience  and 
ability,  and  there  is  abundant  evidence  in  the  report  that  it  was 
prepared  by  one  of  the  delegates,  among  whom  he  was  the  only 
newspaper  man.  If  in  examining  the  columns  of  the  Tribune 
for  the  extract  he  quoted,  Mr.  Johnson  had  read  the  telegrams 
from  Washington  and  the  vicinity  of  McClellan's  head-quarters 
for  the  week  which  terminated  with  the  day  on  which  the  re 
port  appeared,  he  would  have  wondered  that  the  President 
could  have  given  ear  to  any  thing  that  did  not  relate  to  the 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  8 1 

imminent  business  of  the  hour.  In  this  sense  the  Memorial  of 
the  Progressive  Friends,  telling  him  what  blessings  would  im 
mediately  flow  from  a  proclamation  of  emancipation,  and  that 
in  default  of  the  issue  of  such  a  proclamation  the  Friends  had 
"  fearful  reason  to  apprehend  that  blood  will  continue  to  flow, 
and  fierce  dissensions  to  abound,  and  calamities  to  increase, 
and  fiery  judgments  to  be  poured  out,  until  the  work  of 
national  destruction  is  consummated  beyond  hope  of  recovery," 
could  not  fail  to  have  been  regarded  by  him  as  inopportune 
and  impertinent  to  the  hour. 

The  examination  of  the  columns  of  the  Tribune  for  that 
single  week  would  have  reminded  Mr.  Johnson  that  the  battle 
of  Fair  Oaks  had  been  fought,  and  have  shown  him  that,  with 
an  oppressive  summer  temperature  prevailing,  our  sick  and 
wounded  soldiers  from  that  and  other  fields  were  festering  in 
the  sun  around  what  would  have  been  comfortable  quarters  for 
a  hospital,  in  the  midst  of  green  fields  and  under  the  shade  of 
umbrageous  trees,  which,  because  the  property  belonged  to  a 
Confederate  officer,  Lieutenant  Lee,  was  guarded  by  Union 
soldiers  against  them  and  the  medical  staff  of  the  army  ;  and 
that  when,  to  escape  one  of  the  violent  summer  gusts  that 
characterize  that  malarial  portion  of  our  country,  bluff  Ben. 
Wade  and  a  party  of  Senators  sought  shelter  under  the  roof  of 
the  broad  porticos,  or,  what  in  the  South  are  called  the 
"  galleries  "  of  a  luxurious  mansion,  bayonets  in  the  hands  of 
Union  soldiers  repelled  them.  The  property  belonged  to  a  rebel, 
who  was  then  serving  as  an  officer  in  the  Confederate  army,  and 
loyal  citizens  could  therefore  not  be  admitted  within  the  en 
closure  even  for  shelter  from  a  passing  summer  gust.  When  the 
Senatorial  party  found  Gen.  Sumner,  who  was  in  immediate 
command,  and  complained  to  him  of  the  exhaustion  of  our 
men  by  compelling  them  to  protect  the  property  of  those  who 
were  in  arms  against  them,  the  reply  was  :  "  Gentlemen,  you 
must  not  hold  me  responsible.  I  am  not  General-in-Chief, 
and  must,  within  my  lines,  enforce  the  orders  of  my  superior 
officer." 


82  LINCOLN  AND  STANTON. 

As  part  of  that  week's  history  Mr.  Johnson  would  also  have 
learned  that,  while  the  President  had  reason  to  expect  news  of 
a  vigorous  advance  of  our  army,  the  rebel  Colonel  Stewart, 
with  a  single  regiment  of  cavalry  and  four  pieces  of  mounted 
artillery,  had  raided  through  our  lines  to  our  base  of  supplies, 
the  White  House.  A  subdued  account  of  this  discouraging 
incident  is  thus  given  in  General  McClellan's  final  report  of 
the  Peninsular  Campaign,  under  date  of  August  4,  1863  : 

"On  the  i3th  of  June  two  squadrons  of  the  Fifth  U.  S. 
cavalry,  under  command  of  Captain  Royall,  stationed  near 
Hanover  Old  Church,  were  attacked  and  overpowered  by  a 
force  of  the  enemy's  cavalry,  numbering  about  fifteen  hundred 
men,  with  four  guns.  They  pushed  on  towards  our  depots, 
but  at  some  distance  from  our  main  line,  and,  though  pursued, 
very  cleverly  made  the  circuit  of  the  army,  repassing  the  Chicka- 
hominy  at  Long  Bridge.  The  burning  of  two  schooners  laden 
with  forage,  and  •  fourteen  government  wagons  ;  the  destruc 
tion  of  some  sutlers'  stores,  the  killing  of  several  of  the 
guard  and  teamsters  at  Garlick's  Landing,  some  little  damage 
done  at  Tunstall's  Station,  and  a  little  eclat,  were  the  precise 
results  of  this  expedition." 

This  official  account  had  not  reached  the  President  on  the 
2oth  of  June,  1862,  but  the  Tribune  had,  and  in  addition  to  the 
information  the  General's  report  would  subsequently  furnish 
had  told  him  that  by  the  light  of  blazing  schooners,  forage, 
army  wagons,  and  sutlers'  stores,  the  raiders  had  been  able  to 
select  from  our  hospitals  needed  medical  supplies  and  stores 
generally  for  the  Confederate  army. 

While  Confederate  troops  were  permitted  to  thus  forage 
upon  us,  and  destroy  our  forces  in  detail,  the  country  was  cry 
ing,  "  On  to  Richmond  !"  The  President,  in  response  to  the 
popular  appeal,  was  begging  the  General  to  advance,  and 
McClellan  and 'his  trusted  lieutenants  were  appealing  to  the 
troops  against  Lincoln  and  Stanton  for  alleged  interference 
with  his  management  of  the  army.  Prominent  among  the  evil 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  83 

reports  to  which  I  referred,  was  the  alarming  one  that  large 
bodies  of  the  troops  under  McClellan,  with  their  officers,  had 
been  so  prejudiced  against  the  President,  by  their  commander 
and  his  personal  adherents  as  to  threaten  resignation  by  offi 
cers  and  revolt  in  the  ranks,  if  colored  troops  were  enlisted 
or  radical  views  on  the  subject  of  slavery  were  declared. 
These  reports  came  daily  to  the  President  ;  nor  were  they  idle 
rumors,  for  in  less  than  three  weeks  after  the  interview  under 
consideration,  McClellan's  seditious  letter  of  July  7th,  to  the 
President,  from  the  gunboat  on  which  he  had  sought  shelter 
from  the  dangers  of  battle,  was  made  public,  with  its  bold 
avowal  that  "  a  declaration  of  radical  views,  especially  upon 
slavery,  will  rapidly  disintegrate  our  present  armies." 

In  view  of  these  few  straggling  facts  it  will  not  be  believed 
that  I  was  mistaken  when  I  said,  "  there  was  that  in  the  Presi 
dent's  manner  which  showed  that  the  visit  was  inopportune." 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  mortal ;  he  was,  in  my  judgment,  by  far 
the  greatest  man  our  country  has  produced  :  yet  he  was  mor 
tal,  and  yearned,  above  all  things,  for  the  final  approval  of 
mankind.  When  his  self-respect  would  permit  it,  he  com 
plained — and  justly — to  the  inner  circle  of  his  friends  of  the 
wounds  the  Abolitionists  as  a  body  delighted  to  inflict  upon 
him.  It  was  as  an  Abolitionist  that  my  revered  friend,  Dr. 
Furness,  put  into  the  mouth  of  scoffers,  as  a  proverb,  the  say 
ing,  "  The  President  would  like  to  have  God  on  his  side,  but 
he  must  have  Kentucky."  It  was  as  an  Abolitionist  that  Wen 
dell  Phillips  spoke  of  him  as  "  a  mosaic  of  slavery  and  free 
dom — a  man  who  had  never  walked  a  straight  line  in  his  life." 
And  it  was  as  Abolitionists  that  the  Progressive  Friends  called 
on  him  ;  and  when,  in  listening  to  their  deliberately  prepared 
address,  he  found  that  by  the  use  of  an  imperfect  quotation 
from  an  address  delivered  years  before  his  nomination  for  the 
Presidency,  his  attitude  on  the  question  of  slavery  was 
changed,  the  qualifications  with  which  he  had  defined  it 
omitted,  and  his  veracity  impugned,  he  replied  with  an  asperity 
of  manner  of  which  I  had  not  deemed  him  capable. 


84  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

From  Mr.  Johnson's  report  to  the  Tribune  I  quote  the  fol 
lowing  extract  from  the  Memorial  :  "  That  in  his  speech,  de 
livered  at  Springfield  before  his  election  to  the  office  of  Chief 
Magistrate,  the  President  expressly  declared  that  '  a  house 
divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.  I  believe  that  this  govern 
ment  cannot  permanently  endure  half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do 
not  expect  the  Union  to  be  dissolved  ;  I  do  not  expect  the 
House  to  fall,  but  I  do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will 
become  all  the  one  thing  or  all  the  other/  "  Mr.  Lincoln's  first 
duty  to  himself  seemed  to  him  to  be  to  repel  the  intimation  that 
this  extract  was  part  of  a  campaign  speech,  made  while  he  was  i 
candidate  for  the  Presidency,  and  he  did  it  with  emphasis,  for, 
straightening  himself  to  his  full  height,  and,  I  repeat,  with  an 
asperity  of  manner  quite  unusual  with  him,  he  said  :  "  It  is  true 
that  on  the  lyth  of  June,  1858,  I  said  :  '  I  believe  that  this 
government  cannot  permanently  endure  half  slave  and  half 
free/  but  I  said  it  in  connection  with  other  things  from  which 
it  should  not  have  been  separated  in  an  address  discussing 
moral  obligations.  What  I  did  say  was  this  :  '  If  we  could  first 
know  where  we  are,  and  whither  we  are  tending,  we  could  better 
judge  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it.  We  are  far  into  the  fifth 
year  since  a  policy  was  initiated  with  the  avowed  object  and 
confident  promise  of  putting  an  end  to  the  slavery  agitation. 
Under  the  operation  of  .that  policy  that  agitation  has  not  only 
not  ceased,  but  is  constantly  augmented.  In  my  opinion  it 
will  not  cease  until  a  crisis  shall  have  been  reached  and 
passed.  A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.  1  be 
lieve  that  this  government  cannot  permanently  endure  half 
slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to  be  dis 
solved  ;  I  do  not  expect  the  House  to  fall,  but  I  do  expect  that 
it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all  the  one  thing 
or  all  the  other.  Either  the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest 
the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it  where  the  public  mind 
shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  the  course  of  ultimate  ex 
tinction,  or  its  advocates  will  push  it  forward  till  it  shall  be- 


LINCOLN  AND   STAN  TON.  85 

come  alike  lawful  in  all  the  States, — old  as  well  as  new,  North 
as  well  as  South."  And  Mr.  Johnson  tells  us  that  he  added  : 
"  The  sentiments  contained  in  that  passage  were  deliberately 
uttered,  and  I  hold  them  now." 

Mr.  Johnson  is  as  unfair  to  the  President  in  this  communi 
cation  as  Mr.  Lincoln  felt  the  Progressive  Friends  in  Yearly 
Meeting  assembled  had  been.  For  instance,  he  says  that  the 
"  alleged  disjointed  quotation  from  Mr.  Lincoln's  Springfield 
speech  had  appeared  a  thousand  times  in  exactly  the  same 
shape,  and  was  made  in  perfect  good  faith."  Does  that  prove 
that  each  time  Mr.  Lincoln  had  heard  it  from  the  lips  of  pro 
fessed  friends  he  had  not  been  grieved  by  it  ?  Again  he  says  : 
"  Mr.  Lincoln  naturally  desired  to  turn  its  point  so  far  as  to  make 
it  seem  that  it  was  not  incompatible  with  his  conscientious  delay  to 
strike  off  the  shackles  of  the  slaves."  Do  honest  and  truthful 
men  strive  to  turn  the  point  of  their  important  utterances 
when  responsibility  arises  ?  and  does  not  Mr.  Johnson  in  this 
remark  admit  that  their  Memorial  was  intended  to  tell  Abraham 
Lincoln  that  the  Progressive  Friends  held  him  false  and  dere 
lict  ?  Mr.  Lincoln  sought  to  repel  this  covert  imputation  upon 
his  integrity  and  veracity  ;  and  if  Mr.  Johnson's  report  may 
be  relied  upon,  ridiculed  their  prayer  by  saying  :  "  If  a  decree 
of  emancipation  could  abolish  slavery,  John  Brown  would 
have  done  it  effectually.  Such  a  decree  would  not  be  more 
binding  upon  the  South  than  the  Constitution,  and  that  cannot 
be  enforced  in  that  part  of  the  country  now.  Would  a  procla 
mation  of  freedom  be  any  more  effective  ?  "  But  further, 
after  Mr.  Barnard  had  addressed  the  President — a  fact  which 
I  had  failed  to  note, — Mr.  Johnson  tells  us  the  President  said, 
"  he  had  sometimes  thought  that  perhaps  he  might  be  an  in 
strument  in  God's  hands  of  accomplishing  a  good  work,  and 
he  certainly  was  not  unwilling  to  be,"  and  added  :  "  Perhaps, 
however,  God's  way  of  accomplishing  the  end  which  the  Me 
morialists  had  in  view  might  be  different  from  theirs,"  a  dash 
of  that  quiet  sarcasm  of  which  he  was  so  complete  a  master. 


86  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

Whatever  Mr.  Lincoln's  personal  convictions  or  aspirations 
may  have  been  on  that  2oth  of  June,  he  was  not  a  free  agent  ; 
he  had  to  choose  between  challenging  the  execution  of  the 
threats  which  came  from  the  neighborhood  of  McClellan's 
head-quarters,  that  to  take  such  a  step  as  the  Progressive 
Friends  prayed  for  would  disintegrate  the  army,  and  declining 
to  grant  the  sentimental  prayer  of  these  well-meaning  but  inex 
perienced  Memorialists. 

With  a  degree  of  what  Mr.  Lincoln  once  in  my  hearing  spoke 
of  as  the  "  self-righteousness  of  the  Abolitionists,"  Mr.  John 
son  says  that  "  the  President,  at  that  very  moment,  was  more 
than  half  persuaded  that  the  Abolitionists  were  right,  and 
waited  only  for  the  growth  of  the  public  sentiment  that  would 
justify  him  in  doing  what  they  desired."  To  one  who  had 
familiar  access  to  Abraham  Lincoln,  who  had  studied  him, — 
his  experiences,  his  character,  his  purposes, — the  arrogance 
of  this  sentence  is  little  less  than  sublime. 

I  have  known  men  who  were  intimate  with  Mr.  Lincoln  at 
all  the  varied  periods  of  his  life, — through  all  the  struggles  of 
his  early  years  and  the  trials  and  triumphs  of  his  eventful  man 
hood,  and  have  questioned  many  of  them  as  to  whether  at  any 
time  in  his  life  he  had  indulged  in  profanity,  and  have  been 
unable  to  hear  of  his  having  used  an  expression  that  might  be 
regarded  as  profane  in  the  course  of  his  whole  life.  It  is  well 
authenticated  that  he  did  once,  with  much  emphasis,  invoke 
the  name  of  the  Almighty.  It  was  not,  however,  profanely, 
but  to  register  in  heaven  a  vow  while  yet  in  the  twenty- 
second  year  of  his  age,  that  controlled  him  throughout  the 
whole  of  his  wonderful  life.  He  was  in  New  Orleans  with  his 
friend  John  Hanks  ;  they  had  seen  a  sale  of  slaves.  The 
feature  that  most  impressed  young  Lincoln  was  the  sigh£  of 
one  of  the  unhappy  ones,  "  a  beautiful  mulatto  girl."  "  She 
was,"  as  Mr.  Hanks  puts  it,  "  felt  over,  pinched,  and  trotted 
around  to  show  bidders  that  *  said  article  was  sound,  etc.' " 
Lincoln  walked  away  from  the  sad  inhuman  sight  with  a  deep 


LINCOLN  AND   STANTON.  8/ 

feeling  of  "  tmsmotherable  hate,"  and  then  turning  to  John 
Hanks,  said  :  "  By  God,  if  I  ever  get  a  chance  to  hit  that  in 
stitution,  I  will  hit  it  hard,  John,"  and  in  that  blessed  year, 
1831,  Abraham  Lincoln  was  filled  with  convictions  on  the 
subject  of  slavery  that  made  him  forever  feel  that  a  man  who 
warred  on  "that  institution  "  was  right  in  his  object,  though  he 
might  err  in  his  methods,  as  on  the  2oth  of  June,  1862,  he  be 
lieved  the  Progressive  Friends  were  urging  him  to  do. 

How  wofully  the  friends  had  exaggerated  the  power  of  such 
a  proclamation  as  they  prayed  the  President  to  issue,  is  well 
shown  in  the  reminiscences  of  Moncure  D.  Conway,  published 
on  August  3oth,  in  which  he  tells  of  the  interview  between  the 
President,  Senator  Wilson,  Wendell  Phillips,  Francis  W.  Bird, 
Elizur  Wright,  J.  H.  Stephenson,  G.  L.  Stearns,  Oakes  Ames, 
and  himself,  which  occurred  on  the  24th  of  January,  1863. 
The  object  of  this  delegation  was  to  complain  of  the  failure  of 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  and  Mr.  Phillips,  as  its  spokes 
man,  hinted  that  "  the  Northern  people,  now  generally  anti- 
slavery,  were  not  satisfied  that  it  was  being  honestly  carried 
out  by  the  nation's  agents  and  generals  in  the  South."  The 
President  said  he  "  had  not  expected  much  from  it  at  first, 
and,  consequently,  had  not  been  disappointed,"  and  gave  it  as 
his  impression  that  "  the  masses  of  the  country  generally  are 
only  dissatisfied  at  our  lack  of  military  successes."  He  did 
not  hesitate  in  the  course  of  the  interview  with  these  distin 
guished  men  to  say  that  "most  of  us  here  present  have  been 
nearly  all  our  lives  working  in  minorities,  and  many  have  got 
into  a  habit  of  being  dissatisfied"  ;  and  when  this  conclusion 
was  deprecated,  he  added :  "At  any  rate,  it  has  been  very  rare 
that  an  opportunity  of  running  this  administration  has  been 
lost."  And  when  Mr.  Phillips  patronizingly  said  :  "If  we  see 
this  administration  earnestly  working  to  free  the  country  from 
slavery  and  its  rebellion,  we  will  show  you  how  we  can  run  it 
in  another  four  years  of  power,"  to  which,  possibly  remember 
ing  Mr.  Phillips'  description  of  him  as  a  mosaic  and  a  "  man 


88  LINCOLN  AND   STANTON. 

who  had  never  walked  a  straight  line  in  his  life,"  Mr.  Lincoln 
said  :  "  Oh,  Mr.  Phillips,  I  have  ceased  to  have  any  personal 
feeling  or  expectation  in  that  matter, — I  don't  say  I  never 
had  any, — so  abused  and  borne  upon  as  I  have  been  "  ;  and  Mr. 
Conway  tells  us  that  his  last  utterance  to  the  delegation  as 
it  left  him  was  :  "  I  must  bear  this  load  which  the  country  has 
entrusted  to  me  as  well  as  I  can,  and  do  my  best." 

For  one  correction  of  my  statement  I  must  ask  space  to 
thank  Mr.  Johnson.  I  interwove  with  the  interview  now  un 
der  consideration,  an  incident  that  occurred  a  few  days  later 
with  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Hicksite  Friends.  The 
prayer  of  the  lady  was  identical  with  that  of  the  Progressive 
Friends,  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  treatment  of  the  case  was  so  much 
like  that  he  gave  their  application,  that  in  referring  to  the  two 
incidents,  as  I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  do,  they  had  be 
come  blended  in  my  memory. 

WM.  D.  KELLEY. 
THE  ELMS,  Philadelphia,  Sept.  23,  1885. 


The  Story  of  the  Nations. 

]\ /TESSRS.  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  take  pleasure  in  an- 
•*•*-*•  nouncing  that  they  have  in  preparation  a  series  of 
graphic  historical  studies,  intended  to  present  to  the  young  the 
stories  of  the  different  nations  that  have  attained  prominence 
in  history. 

In  the  story  form  the  current  of  each  national  life  will  be 
distinctly  indicated,  and  its  picturesque  and  noteworthy  periods 
and  episodes  will  be  presented  for  the  young  reader  in  their 
philosophical  relations  to  each  other  as  well  as  to  universal 
history. 

It  will  be  the  plan  of  the  writers  of  the  different  volumes  to 
enter  into  the  real  life  of  the  peoples,  and  to  bring  them  before 
the  reader  as  they  actually  lived,  labored,  and  struggled — as 
they  studied  and  wrote,  and  as  they  amused  themselves.  In 
carrying  out  this  plan,  the  myths,  with  which  the  history  of  all 
lands  begins,  will  not  be  overlooked,  though  these  will  be  care 
fully  distinguished  from  the  actual  history,  so  far  as  the  labors 
of  the  accepted  historical  authorities  have  resulted  in  definite 
conclusions. 

The  "  Stories  "  will  be  printed  in  good,  readable  type,  and  in 
handsome  i2mo  form.  They  will  be  adequately  illustrated  and 
furnished  with  maps  and  indexes.  They  will  be  sold  separately, 
at  a  price  of  about  $1.50  each. 

The  following  is  a  partial  list  of  the  subjects  thus  far  deter 
mined  upon  : 


THE  STORY  OF  EGYPT. 
"    ASSYRIA. 

"*GREECE.    Prof.  JAMES  A. 
HARRISON,     Washington 
and  Lee  University. 
"*ROME.  ARTHUR  OILMAN. 
"  "  "*THE  JEWS.   Prof.  JAMES 

K.  HOSMER,  Washington 
University  of  St.  Louis. 
"  "  "    CARTHAGE. 

"    GAUL. 
"    BYZANTIUM.      CHARL- 

TON  T.  LEWIS. 
"  "  "    EARLY  BRITAIN. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  GOTHS. 

"    THE  NORMANS.  SARAH 

O.  JEWETT. 

"    THE  SARACENS. 

"    SPAIN.    By  Rev.  E.  E.  and 

SUSAN  HALE. 
"    GERMANY. 
11    THE       ITALIAN        RE 
PUBLICS. 
"    HOLLAND. 
"    NORWAY.    By  HJALMAR 

H.   BOYESEN. 

(The  volumes  starred  are  expected  to  be  in  readi 
ness  for  the  season  of  1883.) 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS, 
27  and  29  West  23d  Street          -          -          New  York  and  London. 


Illustrations  of  History,  and  Examples  of  Oratory. 

AMERICAN  ORATIONS,  FROM  THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD  TO  THE 
PRESENT  TIME. — Selected  as  specimens  of  Eloquence,  and  with  special 
reference  to  their  value  in  throwing  light  upon  the  more  important  epochs 
and  issues  of  American  History.  Edited,  with  introductions  and  notes,  by 
ALEXANDER  JOHNSTON,  Professor  of  Jurisprudence  and  Political  Economy 
in  the  College  of  New  Jersey.  Three  volumes,  i6mo.  Uniform  with 
"  Prose  Masterpieces."  $3.75. 

CONTENTS. — Colonialism  :  Henry,  Hamilton,  Washington.  Constitu 
tional  Government :  Ames,  Nicholas.  Rise  of  Democracy  :  Jefferson,  Nott, 
Randolph,  Quincy,  Clay.  Rise  of  Nationality  :  .Calhoun,  Hayne,  Webster. 
Anti-Slavery  Struggle  :  Phillips,  Calhoun,  Webster,  Clay.  Abolition  Move 
ment  :  Phillips.  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill :  Chase,  Sumner,  Douglas.  Crime 
against  Kansas  :  Sumner  ;  Preston  S.  Brooks'  Reply  to  Sumner.  Defence 
of  Massachusetts  :  Burlingame.  On  Debates  in  Congress  :  Clingman.  Lin 
coln  on  /us  Nomination /  Douglas  in  reply.  Breckenrklge  and  Seward  on 
Slavery.  Secession :  Crittenden,  Iverson,  Toombs,  Hale,  Stevens,  Cox. 
Civil  War  and  Reconstruction  :  Lincoln,  Davis  (Jefferson),  Stevens,  Doug 
las,  Vallandigham,  Schurz,  Beecher,  Lincoln  (second  inaugural  address), 
Davis  (H.  W.),  Pendleton,  Sherman,  Stevens,  Garfield,  Blackburn,  Hay- 
good.  Protection  and  Free  Trade  :  Clay,  Hurd. 

"The  idea,  the  plan,  and  the  execution  of  the  work  are  admirable." — 
Boston  Advertiser. 

"The  best  method,  in  our  judgment,  to  acquire  a  truly  fine  style  either 
for  the  pen  or  the  platform  is  by  reading  and  re-reading  the  best  specimens 
of  English  ;  and  for  the  orator,  whether  at  the  bar,  on  the  platform,  or  in 
the  pulpit,  a  careful  reading  of  these  volumes  will  be  an  admirable  educa 
tion." —  Christian  Union,  New  York. 

BRITISH  ORATIONS.— A  selection  of  the  more  important  and 
representative  Political  Addresses  of  the  past  two  centuries.  Edited,  with 
introductions  and  notes,  by  CHARLES  K.  ADAMS,  Professor  of  History  in 
the  University  of  Michigan.  Three  vols.,  i6mo.  Uniform  with  "American 
Orations."  $3.75. 

CONTENTS. — Eliot  (Sir  John),  Pym,  Chatham,  Mansfield,  Burke,  Pitt, 
Fox,  Mackintosh,  Erskine,  Canning,  Macaulay,  Cobden,  Bright,  Beacons- 
field,  Gladstone. 

"  Carefully  selected  specimens  of  oratorical  eloquence The 

volumes  contain  a  rich  store  of  instructive,  no  less  entertaining  material." — 
Advertiser,  Boston. 

"Show  the  great  currents  of  political  thoughts  that  have  done  much  to 
shape  the  history  of  Great  Britain." — JV.  JL.  Journal  of  Education,  Boston. 

"  Not  only  of  interest  to  the  student  of  oratory,  but  to  all  who  would 
trace  the  rise  and  progress  of  free  political  institutions." — Transcript,  Port 
land. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS, 
27  and  29  West  23d  Street          •          •          New  York  and  London. 


TOPICS  OF  THE  TIME. 


A  series  of  representative  essays  on  questions  of  the  day.  Prin 
cipally  selected  from  the  leading  British  and  Continental  journals. 
Published  in  handsomely  printed  i6mo  volumes.  Price  each,  in 
paper,  25  cents  ;  in  cloth,  flexible,  60  cents.  The  set,  six  volumes, 
in  box,  $3  50. 

Vol.1.  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS.  Comprising  Giff en  on  "  World- 
Crowding,"  Labouchere  on  "  The  Coming  Democracy,"  Laveleye  on  "  The 
European  Terror,"  Jehan  de  Paris  ou  "  Secret  Societies  in  France,"  Flana 
gan  on  "  Home  Rule  and  Secession,"  Auberon  Herbert  on  "A  Politician  in 
Trouble  about  his  Soul,"  besides  anonymous  papers  on  "  Europe  in 
Straits  "  and  "  The  Nationalization  of  the  Land." 

Vol.  II.  STUDIES  IN  BIOGRAPHY.  Including  Harrison  on 
"  Gambetta,"  Miss  Christie  on  "  Miss  Burney's  Own  Story,"  Dasent  on 
'  Bishop  Wilberforce,"  Traill  on  "  Lord  Westbury  and  Bishop  Wilberforce," 
and  anonymous  articles  on  "  Dean  Swift,"  "  Literary  Bohemians,"  and 
"  George  Sand." 

Vol.  III.  STUDIES  IN  LITERATURE.  Containing  essays  by 
Matthew  Arnold  on  "  Isaiah  of  Jerusalem,"  by  Thomas  Wright,  the  Jour 
neyman  Engineer,  on  "  The  Unknown  Public, "by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Stokes  on 
"  The  Bollandists,"  Leifchild  on  "  Hamlet,"  Shorthouse  on  "  The  Humor 
ous  in  Literature,"  and  an  essay  on  "  American  Literature  in  England." 

Vol.  IV.  HISTORICAL  STUDIES.  Consisting  of  papers  by 
Rev.  Augustus  Jessopp  on  "Norfolk  600  Years  Ago,"  by  Samuel  James 
Cappar  on  "  Siena,"  by  Frederic  Harrison  on  "  The  Eighteenth  Century," 
Oscar  Browning  on  "  France  and  England  in  1793,"  and  a  paper  on  "  Gen 
eral  Chanzy." 

Vol.  V.  QUESTIONS  OF  BELIEF.  Containing  the  following  Es 
says  :  "  The  Responsibility  of  Unbelief,"  by  Vernon  Lee  ;  "  Agnostic  Mo 
rality,"  by  Frances  Power  Cobbe  ;  "  Natural  Religion,"  by  Edmund  Gur- 
ney  ;  "  The  Suppression  of  Poisonous  Opinions,"  by  Leslie  Stephen,  etc. 

Vol.  VI.  ART  AND  LITERATURE.  Comprising  "  The  Philos 
ophy  of  the  Beautiful, "by  Prof.  J.  S.  Blackie  ;  "  South  Kensington  Hellen 
ism  :  A  Dialogue,"  by  H.  D.  Traill  ;  "  The  Beginning  of  Art,"  by  Stanley 
Lane-Poole  ;  "The  Ancient,  Mediaeval,  and  Modern  Stage";  "The 
Impressionists,"  by  Frederick  Wedmore  ;  "Wagner  and  Wagnerism,"  by 
Edmund  Gurney. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  PUBLISHERS, 

NEW  YORK  and   LONDON. 


IMPORTANT  STANDARD  WORKS 

RECENTLY    PUBLISHED. 

PRE-HISTORIC  AMERICA.  By  the  MARQUIS  DE  NADAILLAC, 
translated  by  N.  D'ANVERS,  author  of  "A  History  of  Art/'  Edited 
with  notes  by  W.  H.  DALL.  Large  8vo,  with  219  illustrations  $5  oo 

CHIEF  CONTENTS. — Man  and  the  Mastodon,  The  Kjokkemmoddings  and  Cave 
Relics,  Mound  Builders,  Pottery,  Cliff  Dwellers,  Central  American  Ruins,  Peru,  Early 
Races,  Origin  of  American  Aborigines,  etc.,  etc. 

THE   DISCOVERIES  OF  AMERICA  TO  THE  YEAR  1525. 

By  ARTHUR  JAMES  WEISE.  Second  edition.  One  large  octavo 
volume,  with  maps .  $4  50 

The  work  presents  the  most  important  and  veritable  information  of  what  was 
known  by  the  ancients  respecting  the  continent  and  islands  in  the  Western  Hemi 
sphere,  together  with  that  found  in  the  Sagas  of  Iceland  and  Greenland  in  relation  to 
the  discoveries  of  the  Northmen,  and  also  that  contained  in  certain  rare  books,  manu 
scripts,  and  maps,  descriptive  of  the  explorations  of  Columbus,  the  Cabots,  Cortereal, 
Verrazzano,  and  other  navigators,  to  the  year  1525 

A  HISTORY  OF  THE  THIRTY  YEARS'  WAR.  By  ANTON 
GINDELY,  Professor  of  German  History  in  the  University  of  Prague. 
Translated  by  ANDREW  TEN  BROOK,  recently  Professor  of  Mental 
Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Michigan.  Second  edition.  Two 
volumes,  octavo,  with  maps  and  illustrations  .  .  .  $4  oo 

LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  GUSTAVUS  ADOLPHUS.  By  the 
Hon.  JOHN  L.  STEVENS,  LL.D.,  recently  United  States  Minister  to 
Stockholm.  8vo,  with  new  portrait  engraved  on  steel  .  $2  50 

THE  COMPLETE  WORKS  OF  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON. 

Including  his  Contributions  to  the  "  Federalist."  Edited,  with  in 
troduction  and  notes,  by  HENRY  CABOT  LODGE.  Nine  volumes, 
handsomely  printed  from  type,  with  two  portraits  engraved  on  steel. 
Edition  limited  to  500  copies.  ,  .  $45  oo 

CONTENTS. 

I.    Revolutionary.    Government  and  the  V.  Foreign  Relations. 

Constitution.  VI.  The  Excise  and  Whiskey  Rebellion. 

II.    Taxation  and  Finance.  Miscellaneous. 

III.  National  Banks.     Coinage,  Industry,  VII.  Miscellaneous. 

and  Commerce.  VIII.     Private  Correspondence. 

IV.  Foreign  Relations.  IX.    The  Federalist. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London. 


Recent  and  Standard    Works  of  Travel. 

FROM   POLE   TO   PYRAMID.     By  SAMUEL  S.  Cox. 

PART    I. 

ARCTIC  SUNBEAMS;  or,  FROM  BROADWAY  TO  THE  BOSPHOROUS, 
by  way  of  the  North  Cape.     8vo,  illustrated       .         .         .         $2  oo 

"  The  attractive  manner  in  which  this  book  is  written,  its  graphic  description, 
and  its  light  humor,  give  it  almost  the  charm  of  a  romance. '"^National  Republican. 

PART  II. 

ORIENT   SUNBEAMS  ;  or,  FROM  THE  PORTE  TO  THE  PYRAMIDS, 
by  way  of  Palestine.     Svo,  illustrated         .         .         .          .         $2  oo 

"  Without  any  pretence  to  be  thoroughly  descriptive  or  instructive,  it  com 
pletes  a  series  of  entertaining,  thoughtful,  and  agreeable  sketches." — N.  Y.  World. 

UNBEATEN  TRACKS  IN  JAPAN.  By  ISABELLA  BIRD,  author  of 
"A  Lady's  Life  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  etc.  2  volumes,  Svo, 
illustrated,  $5  oo.  Popular  edition,  2  volumes  in  one.  Svo,  illus 
trated  ..........  $3  oo 

"  But  it  is  in  descriptions  of  men  and  manners  that  she  excels,  and  in  them  she 
is  so  excellent  that  in  no  other  book  in  English  is  there  any  thing  like  so  vivid  a  picture 
as  she  gives  of  the  Japanese  people." — A'.  Y.  World. 

MOROCCO,  ITS  PEOPLE  AND  PLACES.  By  EDMONDO  DE 
AMICIS.  Translated  by  C.  ROLLIN  TILTON.  Svo,  fully  illustrated, 
uniform  with  "  Spain  "  and  "  Holland  "  $2  oo 

The  centre  of  European  political  interests  and  complications  has  for  the 
moment  been  transferred  to  North  Africa,  and  this  description  of  methods  of  life  and 
thought  of  one  of  the  most  picturesque  of  North  African  peoples,  and  by  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  of  modern  travellers,  has  at  this  time  a  special  interest  and  value. 

Morocco  is  a  country  of  color  and  of  brilliant  contrasts,  and  presents  a  worthy 
subject  for  a  writer  who  revels  in  color  and  has  been  called  a  painter  in  words. 

PORTUGAL,  OLD  AND  NEW.  By  OSWALD  CRAWFURD,  British 
Consul  at  Oporto.  New  and  cheaper  edition.  Svo,  with  all  the 
original  illustrations  .  .  .  .  .  .  $2  25 

14  The  work  possesses,  in  addition  to  a  keen  sense  of  humor  and  a  lively  power 
of  description,  a  thorough  trustworthiness,  and  will  undoubtedly  remain  the  authority 
on  the  subject  of  this  interesting  and  little-known  country."—  The  Nation. 

CUBAN  SKETCHES.    By  JAMES  \V.  STEELE.    Svo,  cloth  extra,  $i  50 

Graphic  studies  of  life  and  character  by  an  old  resident,  who  has  a  keen  sense 
of  humor  and  an  exceptionally  picturesque  style. 

4k  Written  with  much  spirit  and  inimitable  powers  of  description." — Cincin 
nati  Commercial. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London. 


THE  TRAVELLERS'  SERIES. 

SKETCHES  OF  PEOPLE  AND  PLACES. 

i6mo,  paper,  per  volume,  50  cts. 

1  THE  GREAT  FUR  LAND  ;  or,  SKETCHES  OF  LIFE  IN  THE  HUD- 

SON  BAY  TERRITORY.  By  H.  M.  ROBINSON.  With  numerous  illus 
trations  from  designs  by  CHARLES  GASCHE. 

'•  Mr.  Robinson's  narratives  exhibit  a  freshness  and  glow  of  delineation  founded 
on  a  certain  novelty  of  adventure  which  commands  the  attention  of  the  reader 
and  makes  his  story  as  attractive  as  a  romance." — N.  Y.  Tribune. 

2  ITALIAN  RAMBLES.    By  JAMES  JACKSON  JARVES,  author  of  "  The 

Art  Idea,"  "  Italian  Sights,"  etc. 

41  Picturesque  and  vivid  descriptions  of  people  and  places  in  out-of-the-way 
nooks  in  Italy.  Mr.  Jarves  possesses  not  only  literary  skill,  but  a  thorough  knowledge, 
based  on  a  sojourn  of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  of  the  country  of  which  he  writes." — 
Chicago  Times. 

3  STUDIES  OF  PARIS.      By  EDMONDO  DE  AMICIS,  author  of  "  Con 

stantinople,"  "  Holland  and  Its  People,"  "  Spain  and  the  Span 
iards,"  etc. 

41  De  Amicis  has  comprehended  the  manifold  amazement,  the  potent  charm 
of  Paris  as  no  writer  before  him  has  done." — Press,  Portland. 

4  THE    ABODE  OF  SNOW.      Observations  of  a  tour  from  Chinese 

Thibet  to  the  valleys  of  the  Himalayas.     By  ANDREW  WILSON. 

"  Worthy  of  the  highest  praise.  There  is  not  a  page  in  the  handsome  volume  of 
nearly  500  pages  which  will  not  repay  perusal.  *  *  *  He  describes  all  he  meets 
with  on  his  way  with  inimitable  spirit/'— London  Athenaum. 

5  A  LADY'S  LIFE   IN  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.     By  ISA 

BELLA  BIRD,  author  of  "  Six  Months  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,"  "  Un 
beaten  Tracks  in  Japan, "etc. 

41  Miss  Bird  is  an  ideal  writer.  *  *  *  She  has  regard  to  the  essentials  of  a 
scene  or  episode,  and  describes  these  with  a  simplicity  that  is  as  effective  as  it  is 
artless." — London  Spectator. 

6  TENT  LIFE  IN  SIBERIA,  AND  ADVENTURES  AMONG 

THE  KORAKS  AND  OTHER  TRIBES  IN  KAM- 
TCHATKA  AND  NORTHERN  ASIA.  By  GEORGE  KEN- 
NAN.  Seventh  edition. 

The  London  Athenceum  says:  "  We  strongly  recommend  this  book  as  one  of  the 
most  entertaining  volumes  of  travel  that  have  appeared  for  some  years." 

The  London  Spectator  says  it  is  "  racy,  clear,  full  of  humor,  and  full  of  interest." 

7  BY-WAYS  OF  NATURE  AND  LIFE.     By  CLARENCE  DEMING. 

44  Some  capital  sketches  penned  in  out-of-the-way  places." — Westminster  Review. 

8  CUBAN  SKETCHES.     By  JAMES  W.  STEELE. 

41  Written  with  much  spirit  and  inimitable  powers  of  description." — Cincinnati 
Commercial. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  Publishers, 

NEW  YORK:  LONDON: 

27  $c  29  West  23d  St.  25  Henrietta  St.,  Covent  Garden. 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 


I.     The  Independent  Movement  in  New  York,  as  an  Element  in 
the  next  Elections  and  a  Problem  in  Party  Government.     By 
JUNIUS.     Octavo,  cloth  .          .          .          .         .          .     $i  oo 

II.  Free  Land  and  Free  Trade.  The  Lessons  of  the  English  Corn- 
Laws  Applied  to  the  United  States.  By  SAMUEL  S.  Cox. 
Octavo,  cloth 75 

III.  Our  Merchant  Marine.     How  it  rose,  increased,  became  great, 

declined,  and  decayed  ;  with  an  inquiry  into  the  conditions 
essential  to  its  resuscitation  and  prosperity.  By  DAVID  A. 
*WELLS.  Octavo,  cloth i  oo 

IV.  The  Elective  Franchise  in  the  United  States.     By  D.  C. 

MCMILLAN.       I2mO,   cloth      .  .  .  .  .  I    OO 

V.  The  American  Citizen's  Manual.  Edited  by  WORTHINGTON 
C.  FORD.  Part  I. — Governments  (National,  State,  and  Local), 
the  Electorate,  and  the  Civil  Service.  Octavo,  cloth  .  75 
VI.  The  American  Citizen's  Manual.  Part  II. — The  Functions 
of  Government,  considered  with  special  reference  to  taxation 
and  expenditure,  the  regulation  of  commerce  and  industry,  pro 
vision  for  the  poor  and  insane,  the  management  of  the  public 

lands,  etc.     Octavo,  cloth 75 

VII.     Spoiling  the   Egyptians.     A  Tale  of  Shame.     Told  from  the 

British  Blue-Books.     By  J.  SEYMOUR  KEAY.     Octavo,  cloth,  75 

VIII.     The   Taxation  of  the  Elevated  Railroads  in  the  City  of 

New  York.     By  ROGER  FOSTER.     Octavo,  paper         .         25 

IX.     The  Destructive  Influence  of  the  Tariff  upon  Manufacture 

and   Commerce,  and   the   Facts   and    Figures    Relating 

Thereto.  By  J.  SCHOENHOF.  Octavo,  cloth,  75  cents  ;  paper,  40 

X.     Of  Work  and  Wealth.     A  Summary  of  Economics.    By  R.  R. 

BOWKER.     Octavo,  cloth 75 

XI.  Protection  to  Young  Industries  as  Applied  in  the  United 
States.  A  Study  in  Economic  History.  By  F.  W.  TAUSSIG. 

Octavo,  cloth 75 

XII.     Terminal  Facilities.     By  W.  N.  BLACK.     i2mo,  paper     .     25 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  Publishers,  New  York  and  London. 


QUESTIONS  ui-    m  t  DAY. 


XIII.  F  .  ,:  *  -  ,  HAW 

LOWELL.     Octavo,  ck  a,  75  cents  ;  j<aper      ...         40 

XIV.  "  The  Jukes."      A  Study  in  Crime,   Pauperism,   Disease,    and 

Heredity.     By  R.  L.  DUGDALE.     Octavo,  cloth     .         .100 

XV.     Protection  and  Communism.     By  WM.  RATHBONE.     Octavo, 

P"Per  .........         25 

XVI.     ThfkrFrue  Issue.     By  E.  J.  DONNELL.     Octavo,  paper   .         25 

XVII.     Heavy  Ordnance  for  National  Defence.    By  WM.  H.  JAQUES, 

.  U.  S.  Navy.     Octavo,  paper         ....         25 

XVIII.     The  Spanish  Treaty  Opposed  to  Tariff  Reform.  ^By  D.  H. 
CHAMBERLAIN,    JNO.   DEWITT  WARNER,  '  GRAHAM    MCADAM, 
and  J.  SCHOENHOF.     Octavo,  paper        ....         25 

XIX.     The  History  of  the    Present   Tariff.      By  F.  W.   TAUSSIG. 
Octavo,  cloth  ........         75 

XX.     The  Progress  of  the  Working  Classes  in  the  Last  Half 

Century.     By  ROBT.  GIFFEN.     Octavo,  paper       .         .         25 

XXI.     The   Solution   of  the   Mormon   Problem.      By   Capt.   JOHN 

CODMAN.     Octavo,  paper        ......         25 

XXII.     Defective  and   Corrupt   Legislation  ;  the   Cause   and  the 
Remedy.     By  SIMON  STERNE.     Octavo,  paper      .         .         25 

XXIII.  Social    Economy.      By  J.   E.    THOROLD   ROGERS.      Octavo, 

cloth       ..........         75 

XXIV.  The  History  of  the  Surplus  Revenue  of  1837.     B7  EDWARD 

G.  BOURNE.     I2mo,  cloth       ......     i  25 

XXV.    The  American   Caucus   System.      By  GEORGE  W.  LAWTON. 
Octavo,  cloth,  $1.00;  paper   ......         50 

XXVI.  The  Science  of  Business.     By  RODERICK  H.  SMITH.     Octavo, 

cloth      ..........      I  25 

XXVII.  The  Evolution  of  Revelation.     By  JAMES  MORRIS  WHITON, 

PH.D.     Octavo,  paper    .......         25 

XXVIII.  The   Postulates  of  English  Political  Economy.     By  WAL 

TER  BAGEHOT.     Octavo,  cloth         .         .         .         .         .100 

XXIX.  Lincoln  and  Stanton.       By  Hon.  W.  D.  KELLEY.     Octavo, 

cloth,  50  cents  ;  paper     .......         25 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  Publishers,  New  York  and  London. 


RETURN  TO  the  circulation  desk  of  any 

University  of  California  Library 

or  to  the 

NORTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 
Bldg.  400,  Richmond  Field  Station 
University  of  California 
Richmond,  CA  94804-4698 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 
2- month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling 

(510)642-6753 
1-year  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing  books 

to  NRLF 
Renewals    and    recharges    may    be    made    4    days 

prior  to  due  date 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


20,000  (4/94) 


•  LJ      O   I    f    /  / 


-U//(,-7,'59(A3982s4)4185 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CDD7D131Db 


